A few metaphysical replies
Someone at a website, and also someone here, said that there's no metaphysical "mechanism" for reincarnation.
Incorrect. Reincarnation is metaphysically-implied. There's an uncontroversial metaphysics that implies reincarnation.
If there's a reason why you're in a life (something that I've discussed here), and if that reason still obtains at the end of this life, then what does that suggest?
No, I don't make an issue about reincarnation (...though I argue for and against various metaphysicses), but I wanted to answer that comment about "no metaphysical mechanism".
Someone here (maybe the same person) said that, if we'll never know from experience whether there's reincarnation (and I suggest that we won't), then the matter is irrelevant.
Well, I suppose that depends on what you want it to be relevant to.
Though we won't know from experience (because, reincarnated or not, we won't always remember this life), reincarnation, as I said, is metaphysically-implied.
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In a discussion about the metaphysics that I propose, I pointed out I didn't say anything to disagree with. The person I was talking to replied, "No, you didn't say anything at all."
No, just an explanation for the physical world, why there's metaphysically anything, and why you're in a life. ...the sorts of matters that metaphysicses address.
Michael Ossipoff
Incorrect. Reincarnation is metaphysically-implied. There's an uncontroversial metaphysics that implies reincarnation.
If there's a reason why you're in a life (something that I've discussed here), and if that reason still obtains at the end of this life, then what does that suggest?
No, I don't make an issue about reincarnation (...though I argue for and against various metaphysicses), but I wanted to answer that comment about "no metaphysical mechanism".
Someone here (maybe the same person) said that, if we'll never know from experience whether there's reincarnation (and I suggest that we won't), then the matter is irrelevant.
Well, I suppose that depends on what you want it to be relevant to.
Though we won't know from experience (because, reincarnated or not, we won't always remember this life), reincarnation, as I said, is metaphysically-implied.
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In a discussion about the metaphysics that I propose, I pointed out I didn't say anything to disagree with. The person I was talking to replied, "No, you didn't say anything at all."
No, just an explanation for the physical world, why there's metaphysically anything, and why you're in a life. ...the sorts of matters that metaphysicses address.
Michael Ossipoff
Comments (99)
So, @Michael Ossipoff, over to you to lay out the premises one by one so we can subject them to scrutiny.
Yes, well said. That's what I mean.
Will do.
Michael Ossipoff
First I'll briefly reply to a few of Tim's questions, and then I'll describe the metaphysical proposal that I'm referring to, and how it implies reincarnation.
Time asks:
Quoting tim wood
As I use the term, "metaphysics" means the discussion of what is, at the limits of what is discussable, describable, and meaningfully assertable and arguable. ...and, within that limitation, at the limits of generality.
I don't claim that metaphysics covers, discusses or describes all that is, or all of Reality. I don't claim that all of what is, all of Reality, is discussable, describable or meaningfully assertable or arguable. Here, I'm not making any assertions, claims, or even comments on that matter. Referring to the matter of what is, but isn't discussable, describable or meaningfully assertable or arguable...I'd call that "meta-metaphysics". I'm not making any claims or assertions about that (...and, by definition it wouldn't be meaningful to do so anyway.) I'm just discussing metaphysics here..
See below.
In logic, it's a proposition, P, about a relation between propositions A and B, such that P is false only if A is true and B is false.
I mean implication with a somewhat weaker meaning, in which the truth of one thing suggests another thing.
See below. The discussion of the implication of reincarnation follows my description of my metaphysical proposal.
A statement is "uncontroversial" if no one can come up with a supportable reason for disagreeing with it.
I'm saying that my metaphysics is uncontroversial. I'm not saying that anything else is uncontroversial.
What I describe isn't a "belief-system".
No. See below.
Metaphysical Proposal:
Let me first summarize, and quote Faraday:
In 1844, the physicist Michael Faraday pointed out that what we observe in the physical world consists of mathematical and logical structural relational facts, and that there’s no particular reason to believe that the physical world consists of more than that.
In particular, there’s no particular reason to believe in the Materialist’s objectively-existent “stuff”.
He was right.
There are abstract if-then facts.
If all Slithytoves are brillig, and all Jaberwockeys are Slithytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are brillig.
That’s true even if none of the Slithytoves are brillig.
That’s true even if none of the Jaberwockeys are Slithytoves.
That’s true even if there are no Slithytoves, and no Jaberwockeys.
When I say that there are abstract if-then facts, I mean only that they “are”, in the sense that they can be stated. I imply or clam nothing about the matter of whether or not they’re “real” or “existent”, whatever that would mean.
Of course, by definition, a fact is true. Otherwise it would be a proposition, but not a fact.
Also, I make no claim about the truth of the premises of the abstract if-thens that I speak of, in regards to the metaphysics that I propose. There’s no particular reason to believe that any of their premises are true.
Any fact about this physical world implies, corresponds to, and can be said as, an if-then fact:
“There is a traffic roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine.”
“If you go to the intersection of 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter, there, a traffic roundabout.”
Additionally, any fact about this physical world is (at least part of) the “if” premise of some if-then facts, and is the “then” conclusion of other if-then facts.
For example:
A set of hypothetical physical quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a “physical law”) together comprise the “if ” premise of an if-then fact. …except that one of those physical quantity-values can be taken as the “then” premise of that if-then fact.
A proved mathematical theorem is an if-then fact, for which at least part of the “if ” premise consists of a set of mathematical axioms.
We’re used to speaking in declarative, indicative grammar. But I suggest that we believe our grammar too much. I suggest that conditional grammar better describes what metaphysically, discussably, describably is.
Instead of one world of “Is”, infinitely-many worlds of “If “.
In addition to abstract if-then facts, there are systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts. There are complex systems of them. …infinitely-many of those as well.
Among that infinity of complex systems of inter-referring if-then facts, there’s inevitably one that’s about events and relations that are those of your experience.
There’s no reason to believe that your experience is other than that.
I call that your “life-experience possibility-story”.
Why are you in a life? Because you’re the hypothetical protagonist of a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story. To say it differently, there’s a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story that has, as its protagonist, someone just like you—you, in fact.
Now, if you’re in a life for a reason, then what if, at the end of this life, that reason still obtains? What does that suggest? …
At the end of life, there’s eventual unconsciousness and sleep. …”unconsciousness” only in the sense of absence of waking-consciousness. Of course eventually that ever deepening unconsciousness reaches a time when you don’t know (or care) that there ever were, or could be, such things as identity, individuality, worldly-life, time, or events …or hardships, problems, lack, or incompletion.
Of course, by the timescale of an outside observer of the shutting-down of your body, you’ll soon be completely shut-down. But you don’t know or care about that, because you don’t even know that there is, was, or could be such a thing as time or events. You’ve reached timelessness. The impending complete shutdown of your body, which will be observed by your survivors, is entirely irrelevant and unknown to you.
But I suggest that it isn’t certain that you’ll reach that deep, near-end, stage of shutdown at the end of this life:
But, before you reach the place in shutdown at which you’re quite unaware of life, time, events or worldly-experience, it’s reasonable to suggest that there’s a lesser degree of unconsciousness in which you merely don’t remember or know the exact details of the life that has just ended, or exactly what’s going on, but you still retain your old subconscious attributes, predispositions and inclinations.
Lacking factual information and waking-consciousness, you don’t know if you’re coming or going, but you retain your subconscious attributes, predispositions and inclinations, including a future-orientedness, and an orientation towards worldly-life.
There’s a life-experience possibility-story about you, as you are at that particular time. You’re the protagonist of that experience-story. That life-experience story necessarily starts where you are, as do all lives, with someone who is like you are at that time. …without waking-consciousness, without any factual knowledge of what’s going on.
Without explanation, not knowing what’s going on, you’re experiencing without waking-consciousness. That situation began at the end of a life, but you don’t remember that.
As I said above, if the reason why you were in a life before continues to obtain at the end of your life, then what does that suggest?
I emphasize that reincarnation isn’t _part of_ my metaphysics. It’s just, I suggest, an implied consequence it.
You can disagree with my suggestion that it’s an implied consequence of my metaphysics, without disagreeing with the metaphysics itself.
In one paragraph above, I described a particularly deep level of unconsciousness at the end of life. I suggest that few people reach that stage, because their retained subconscious inclinations and predispositions lead them elsewhere, as described above.
According to Hinduism and Buddhism, very few people reach the end-of-lives at the end of this life, basically for the reason that I described.
The suggestion of reincarnation isn’t really so fantastic. It’s no more fantastic than the various alternative suggestions. In fact, the fact that you’re in a life (even if an explanation can be suggested) is, itself, something remarkable, fantastic and surprising.
Anyway, whether or not you agree with the reincarnation-implication, the metaphysics that I propose implies an open-ness, loose-ness and lightness in stark contrast to Materialism’s grim accounting.
…an insubstantial , ethereal nature for what is describable and discussable.
I suggest that there’s something inherently good about “what-is”.
Michael Ossipoff
In the above quotation the following conditional:
If all Slithytoves are brillig, and all Jaberwockeys are Slithytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are brillig.
is a conditional proposition, which is a compound proposition claiming a relation of entailment between its component propositions. Propositions might be abstract entities (in fact they probably are) and by extension conditional propositions are also abstract entities. However, facts are usually regarded as those things that make individual propositions true. Insofar as conditional propositions are true, though, we do not introduce "if-then" facts to make them true, since the truth or falsity of conditional propositions is entirely accounted for by the truth or falsity of the antecedent and consequent. This is true for all compound propositions - their truth or falsity is accounted for entirely by the truth or falsity of their component propositions plus the truth-table rules for the logical connectives between those component propositions.
This is a strange definition of a fact, the usual definition (philosophically speaking anyway) is that a fact is what makes true propositions true.
Don't get me wrong, there are all kinds of philosophical issues with what I have been saying (e.g. if facts make true propositions true, what makes false propositions false?) However, you seem right from the beginning of your proposal to be conflating notions that need to be distinguished, and once you start doing that, the rest of what you say becomes nigh impossible to follow.
Now the only sensible way to interpret "if-then fact" on the basis of what you have said in your introduction is that an "if-then fact" is just an unfortunately chosen name for a conditional proposition. That being so, the complex systems of inter-referring if-then facts you talk about here are just "bundles" of propositions with logical connections between each other. My experience is certainlyother than that because my experience is not a proposition at all, either simple or compound. There are true propositions about my experience, and there are also true conditional propositions in which propositions concerning my experience feature as antecedents and as consequents. My experience, whatever else it is, is something that is capable of making such propositions true.
Tim needs to learn to do a lot better at saying what he means.
In my replies to his comments below, I made a few guesses about what Tim might mean, but in general, it isn’t possible to reply to Tim if he can’t express himself more clearly.
So why reply at all?
One reply is necessary, so that it won’t seem as if I’m evading irrefutable statements.
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Tim says:
That isn’t what I said. But don’t worry about it—It’s close enough.
I’d said:
Tim says:
Maybe, before posting what he thinks, Tim should give it more thought.
In logic, an implication, by its truth-functional definition, is standardly said to be true unless its antecedent is true and its consequent false.
When “imply” is used outside of logic, with its everyday dictionary meaning, we don’t speak of an implication’s consequent or antecedent. I’d already clarified that I wasn’t using “imply” with its logic meaning.
No, I meant what I said. “Imply” has a stronger meaning in logic than it does in other usage. I clarified that I wasn’t using “imply” with the strong meaning that it has in logic.
Oops! Tim forgot to specify an instance in which I said or implied that implication holds when dealing with sets with no members.
In academic articles defining “implication”, I didn’t find mention of sets, but it’s standard that, in its truth-functional definition, an implication is called true unless its premise is true and its conclusion is false. …even when its premise and conclusion refer to things that don’t exist.
…but I won’t try to guess what Tim means.
In usage outside logic, “imply” doesn’t have the strong meaning that it has in logic usage.
I used the word “suggest”, because I wanted to err on the side of caution. Instead of asserting that reincarnation necessarily follows from my metaphysics, I wanted to leave conclusions about that to the reader.
I encourage Tim to not let anyone tell him what he should value.
Tim quoted me:
Tim says:
Well, when I spoke of one instead of the other, that didn’t imply that they’re the same. :D
As usual, it can only be guessed what Tim means. Maybe he means that “Is” and “If “ aren’t the same part of speech. “If “ is a subordinate conjunction, and “Is” is a verb. Did I ignore that difference? Sure, because I was talking, instead, about a distinction between conditional and indicative meanings.
I don’t have or propose a metaphysics of is.
As is always the case in the post that I’m replying to, Tim isn’t being very clear with us about what he means.
.
I’d said:
Tim says:
…and that’s quite a trick, given that I didn’t say or imply anything about the manner, way or sense in which those various things are fantastic. :D
Tim forgot to share with us a specification of the passage in which I said or implied something incorrect about senses in which those things are fantastic.
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After this one reply, I don’t have time to reply to more sloppy and vague rant, and I’m not going to take the time to reply to subsequent posts from Tim.
So that I won’t be expected to, it’s necessary that I declare now that I won’t reply to subsequent posts from Tim. My not replying won’t mean that Tim has said something irrefutable…only that his first effort didn’t justify continuing to reply to him.
Of course if anyone feels that there’s an error, a mis-statement, or that they have a legitimate, supportable disagreement, then they’re encouraged to specify it.
Though I myself don’t have time for more of Tim’s arguments, if anyone feels that, in some subsequent post, Tim has expressed a valid argument about my metaphysical proposal, then that person should feel free to quote that argument, with a claim that it’s valid (and any clarification that’s missing in the argument itself). Then I’ll reply to that person.
Michael Ossipoff
MetaphysicsNow says:
One of us is confusing facts with propositions.
MetaphysicsNow quoted me:
In the above quotation the following conditional:
“If all Slithytoves are brillig, and all Jaberwockeys are Slithytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are brillig.”
…is a conditional proposition
[/quote]
…and it’s a fact.
It’s a true conditional proposition. And it’s a fact. If it makes you happy, you can call it a conditional fact, or an implication fact. I call it an if-then fact, because I’m writing for a broader audience.
Regarding the proposition “Someone posts here under the name of MetaphysicsNow”, what fact makes that proposition true? How about: The fact that someone here posts under the name of “MetaphysicsNow”.
Facts are defined in a number of ways. We often hear a fact is defined as “a state of affairs”, or “a state of affairs that obtains”.
(The latter sounds odd to me, because, if it didn’t obtain, it wouldn’t be a state of affairs…and so the “…that obtains” part seems unnecessary. Maybe someone meant “a hypothetical or putative state of affairs that obtains”…where “a hypothetical or putative state of affairs” could define a proposition.)
I didn’t introduce facts to make propositions true. I spoke of facts because facts were what I wanted to refer to.
I’ll say it again:
An implication-proposition, by its truth-functional definition, is true unless its premise (or “antecedent) is true and its conclusion (or “consequent”) is false.
I’d said:
This is a strange definition of a fact
[/quote]
I didn’t offer it as a definition of a fact. I said that it follows from the various definitions of a fact.
That’s often said about facts, and it’s a reasonable statement. But you’ve mistakenly latched onto it as the definition of a fact.
,
You think?
…like facts and propositions?
Judging by what you’ve been saying in this post that I’m replying to, there are differences that you don’t understand, between facts and propositions.
There isn’t a fact that the Earth is a gas-giant and (given the arithmetical axioms) 2 + 3 = 7. There is a (false) proposition that the Earth is a gas-giant and 2 + 3 = 7.
There’s an if-then fact that, if all Slitheytoves are brillig, and all Jaberwockeys are Slitheytoves, then all Jaberwockeys are brillig.
There’s an if-then fact that, IF the additive associative axiom of the real, rational and integer numbers is true, THEN 2 + 2 = 4.
…where the counting numbers are defined, in the obvious manner, in terms of the multiplicative-identity and addition.
You might want to check out the SEP (That stands for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), on the subjects of facts, state of affairs, and propositions.
You’ll find that there’s rampant disagreement among academic philosophers, and endless quibble over what philosopherrs mean by various words…but, in general, the what I’ve said about facts is consistent with the consensus.
For you, I recommend less assertion and more reading.
Michael Ossipoff
Yes, much of what you say seems directly lifted from MetaphysicsNow’s post.
Therefore, as my reply to you on those matters, I refer you to my reply (above in this thread) to MetaphysicsNow.
But I’ll reply separately, below, to what you said that wasn’t quite word-for-word from MetaphysicsNow’s post.
Now the only sensible way to interpret "if-then fact" on the basis of what you have said in your introduction is that an "if-then fact" is just an unfortunately chosen name for a conditional proposition.
[/quote]
Incorrect. “Fact” doesn’t mean the same thing as “proposition”.
For the difference between a fact and a proposition, I refer you to my reply to MetaphysicsNow…and to the SEP.
Facts.
I didn’t say that your experience is a proposition. I said that there’s no reason to believe that your experience is other than a system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts.
I’ve defined a purposefully-responsive device’s “experience” as its surroundings and events from its point-of-view, in the context of its design-purposes—whether that device is a human or a Roomba. …but I speak of and define my metaphysics in terms of the individual’s experience, with that experience as its fundamental basis.
…your experience consisting of that system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals. An experience, for example, of being a human or a Roomba….a human in the case of the participants in this forum.
So it’s a subjectively-defined metaphysics. …an Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, to use accepted philosophical terms.
There are facts like that.
…something referred to as facts.
You suggest that, in addition to the facts, there’s something else (concrete, fundamentally, independently and objectively existent material things and stuff) that the facts are about. Michael Faraday pointed out that there’s no reason to assume or invent such metaphysical entities or objects.
Our experience and observations, personal and scientific, are about structural, logical, and mathematical if-then relation-facts. There’s no evidence for metaphysical existence of other than that.
Michael Ossipoff
…and it’s a fact.
It’s a true conditional proposition.[/quote]
It is not a fact, and it does not even express a fact. At best it is a logically valid argument couched in the form of a conditional proposition. Any logically valid argument can be expressed as a conditional proposition, where the antecedent is formed by the conjunction of the premises and the conclusion forms the consequent. But where a logically valid argument is expressed as a conditional, it becomes a tautology, and tautologies are vacuously true - as @tim wood says, true uniquely in virtue of their logical form, not true in virtue of their content. What makes logically valid arguments interesting, from a philosophical perspective, is when they purport to be sound, which means when they are presented along with the assertion that all their premises are true.
You have yet to present us with a logically valid argument for the existence of reincarnation, when you do, we can address the matter of its soundness.
No, nothing I said implied or suggested a belief in the existence in "material things and stuff". What I do think is that if there are facts then they are not atomic, they have identifiable parts. The fact that the Elizabeth tower of the Palace of Westminster is 316ft tall, for instance, and the fact that the Elizabeth tower of the Palace of Westminster houses Big Ben, are two distinct facts concerning one thing - the Elizabeth tower of the Palace of Westminster. Now, you might want to argue that what I am calling the Elizabeth tower of the Palace of Westminster is in fact some bundle of facts itself, but that would take argument, not simply assertion and appeal to the "authority" of Michael Faraday. You might like Wittgenstein's Tractatus - there you really do have a philosopher who believes that the world is the totality of facts not of things. Funny thing about the Tractatus, though, is that Wittgenstein doesn't give an argument for that claim, he just asserts it.
For you, I recommend more careful thinking and less incoherent babbling.
We aren't speaking the same language. There' s nothing to say to your comment above, other than to refer you to SEP, so that you can find out what the terminology consensus is, and what "fact" means, in that consensus.
That's why I suggested that you do less asserting and more reading.
Referring to the complex systems of inter-referring if-then facts about hypotheticals that I refer to:
There's no reason to believe any of the premises of the if-then facts that I refer to are true.
I make no claim of soundness for that system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts.
I merely mention that reincarnation is implied (in the weaker ordinary meaning of that word, not the logic meaning) by the metaphysics that I propose.
I emphasize that I make no claim of soundness for the system of inter-referring abstract if-then fact about hypotheticals to which my metaphysics refers.
There's no reason to believe or claim that any of the premises of those abstract if-then facts are true.
Michael Ossipoff
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The central issue here is not about facts, the issue is about the difference between vacuously true propositions - i.e. tautologies that are made true by virtue of their logical form alone - and substantively true propositions, which are made true by facts. Of course, there is the fact that tautologies are made true by virtue of their logical form alone, but that is not the fact expressed by any tautology - the tautology expresses nothing, that is why they are true no matter what.
MO does not understand and/or accept the logical distinction between validity and soundness. I've been around and around this very not-so-merry-go-round with MO before. MO is apparently emotionally invested in his incoherent pet theory, and will just keep repeating the same uninformed assertions, and I think you will simply waste your breath if you try to disabuse him of it.
There are many available articles defining validity vs soundness, as those terms are used in logic, and I've never disagreed with anyone here about those words' defined meanings....unless someone mis-stated those definitions. ...which is entirely possible, given what we've seen in this thread.
I've been repeatedly emphasizing that, regarding the abstract if-then facts that I've been referring to, there' s no reason to believe that any of them are "sound", in the logic sense There's no reason to believe that any of their premises are true.
.In fact, I said that just a few postings ago.
So no, I wouldn't have a motive to refuse to accept the meaning of soundness or validity.
No, not really. But it makes a good story.
Oops! Janus forgot to tell where my metaphysical proposal is incoherent.
But then he also forgot to on the previous occasions when I invited him to be more specific in his rants.
On the previous occasions when Janus kept repeating that statement, and ones like it, I invited him to specify an incorrect assertion of mine. He hasn't done so.
Janus demonstrates for us the common Internet tactic of making lots of attack-worded, but unsupported criticisms of a position that he wants to argue against. Like other people using that tactic Janus seem to believe that the more such sludge he spew,s and the worse his manners, the more effective he will be.
Michael Ossipoff
Your incorrectly calling actualities "if-then facts", when "if-thens" are actually propositions, shows your conflation of soundness and validity.
I know...I'm wasting my breath...and I should know better...
@Michael Ossipoff
Take the last sentence, to what does the possessive pronoun "their" refer? Your if-then facts. Facts do not have premises, arguments have premises. Your writing is peppered with these kinds of errors, and thus manifests an at best superficial appreciation of philosophy, and in all cases a very deep confusion. So now you might try to say, "oh, but you foolish boy, by "premise" I of course mean the "if" part of if-then facts, so if-then facts are arguments and so do have premises". Well, if you are going to take that kind of Humpty-Dumpty view of language, wherein words can mean whatever you want them to mean whenever you want them to mean them, the only person who will ever understand you is you. However, I get the distinct feeling you really do not care whether you are understood by others or not.
I don't appeal to the authority of Michael Faraday. You seem to be suggesting that I'm appealing to Faraday's authority because he's a physicist, and anything a physicist says must be true. But many or most physicists are Materialists, so obviously I'm not saying that Faraday is right because he was a physicist.
I mentioned Faraday partly just to give him credit as the first Westerner that I've heard of, to say what he said. Also, though, I mention him because, even though not everything a physicist says is necessarily true, the fact that a physicist has made those statements shows that not all physicists are Materialists, and that Materialism isn't necessary to or implied by science. ...that science and Eliminative Ontic Structuralism aren't incompatible.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I don't assert it.
I've many times admitted that I can't prove that the Materialist's objectively and fundamentally-existent world, and its objectively existent things, don't superfluously exist, as non-verifiable, non-falsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts that I've described.
Michael Ossipoff
No, that issue isn't central to any evaluation of my metaphysical proposal, because the abstract facts that I speak of aren't tautologies, or facts blatantly equating the same thing worded two ways.
I used the Slithytove example because I wanted to use, as an example, a particularly simple fact. The simplicity, the obviousness that you object to, was my reason for choosing it. I wanted simplicity for that example.
But disregard it if you want to. I've described other if-then facts, including, for example, the fact that IF the additive associative axiom is true, THEN 2 + 2 = 4.
...where the counting numbers are defined by repeated addition of the multiplicative identity.
I've described how hypothetical physical quantity-values and hypothetical relations among them (physical laws) are parts of if-then facts.
As I said, the Slithytove syllogism isn't part of my metaphysical proposal, so, no, there's nothing "central" about your tautology issue
Anyway, even aside from that the point of what you're saying isn't at all clear. If you're saying that a tautology like the Slithytove syllogism isn't a fact, then there's the question of on what "fact" definition you base that claim.
...or is it just your personal feeling that a tautology isn't a fact?
...if that's what you mean--and I don't know what you mean.
In the various definitions of the word "fact", I didn't find any stipulation that a tautology isn't a fact.
For example, a tautoloogy, however trivially-obvious, is a state of affairs, and its an obtaining state of affairs.
Another definition of "fact" that has been stated is "A true bearer of truth-value". A tautology, merely by being true, would then seem to qualify as a fact.
"Bearer of truth value" is often given as a definition of "Proposition". So then, from those two definitions, a fact would be a true proposition.
Or a proposition could be defined as a putative or hypothetical state of affairs.
You mean that a statement of a tautology doesn't provide new information.
You seem to not want to call a tautology a fact because a tautology can't be false, but neither can any proved abstract proposition or theorem.
The difference that a tautology's truth is immediately-obvious, while that isn't necessarily so for theorems or propositions in general. But where does it say that a fact can't be obvious? As I said, I don't know where you get such a definition of "fact".
Anyway, as I said, I don't know what you mean--but that's ok. Don't explain it.
I mention this elsewhere too: Academic philosophy is full of rampant disagreement, and is a thoroughgoing muddle of mutually-contradictory definitions. So then, one common tactic at a philosophy forum is to say, "We can't know what you mean when you don't use the standard terminology":--when the terminology and definitions are thoroughly inconsistent and disputed.
Yes, there's some consensus though, and my use of "facts" is consistent with that consensus.
Michael Ossipoff
If an "if-then" proposition, an implication-proposition, might not be true, then it can't be called a fact. It's only a proposition.
One of the definitions of "fact" that I've found is:
"A true bearer of truth-value". In other words, "A true proposition".
So then a fact can be defined as a true proposition, and so a true if-then proposition can reasonably be called an if-then fact.
A fact has also been defined as a state of affairs, or a state of affairs that obtains.
If A implies B, then that A implies B is a state of affairs. ...a fact. ...a fact that could reasonably be called an "if-then" fact.
Alternatively, if a fact is defined as a state of affairs, then a proposition could be defined as a putative or hypothetical state of affairs.
(I know that, in philosophy, it's often said that a state of affairs doesn't necessarily obtain, and that a fact is a state of affairs that obtains. But a supposed "state of affairs" that doesn't obtain isn't a state of affairs.)
An argument is valid if its premise implies its conclusion.
An argument is sound if it's valid and its premise is true.
By the way, in all the articles I've run across, validity and soundness are applied only to arguments. My metaphiysics refers to implication facts, for which there' s no reason to believe that their premises are true.
A proposition isn't an argument, though the arguments that "valid" and "sound" apply to are based on an implication proposition.
By the way, though it's often said that an implication has an antecedent and a consequent, those are often referred to as "premise" and "conclusion". (...though some want to say that "premise" and "conclusion" only apply to arguments).
I've been referring to "antecedent" and "consequent" as "premise" and "conclusion". There's ample precedent for that usage.
In philosophy, of course there's rampant disagreement about definitions, but my usage is consistent with the basic consensus of those definitions.
A common tactic here consists of taking advantage of philosophy's definitional disagreements, to frivolously and maybe dishonestly take issue with the usage in a post that you can't otherwise find disagreement with.
Then why don't you stop.
Michael Ossipoff
I’d said:
(…but I realize that “valid” and “sound” really apply only to arguments. Strictly speaking then, an implication proposition (such as the true ones that I call implication-facts) isn’t what “valid” and “sound” are applied to.
…even though of course the arguments to which those words apply make use of an implication-proposition which may or may not be true, and whose premise may or may not be true.)
MetaphysicsNow says:
It’s sometimes said that arguments have premise and conclusion, but that implication-propositions instead have antecedent and consequent.
But, in actual usage, we often encounter an implication-proposition’s antecedent referred to as its premise…and its consequent referred to as its conclusion. That’s sometimes found in academic articles.
If an implication-proposition is true, then it’s a true proposition. It’s also a state of affairs. Those are both definitions of a fact.
If an implication-proposition can have an antecedent, which can be called its “premise”, then the fact that an implication-proposition is a true proposition doesn’t mean that it no longer has a premise (antecedent).
Then, as a true proposition, and as a state of affairs, that implication-proposition is now an implication-fact, or an “if-then” fact. …and guess what: That true implication-proposition still has a premise (antecedent).
So yes, an implication fact, a true implication-proposition, has a premise.
Are you done quibbling? :)
Like all of the “errors” you cite, the usage of mine that you referred to above isn’t an error. It’s a usage consistent with consensus for definitions and terms, and an instance of you mis-applying a term or definition.
As I’ve said before, academic philosophy is full of rampant disagreement about terms and definitions. But there’s some consensus, and my usages are consistent with that consensus.
I’ve been suggesting that you do some reading about that. The SEP would be a good place for you to start.
I invited people to specify any incorrect statement or unsupported conclusion in my metaphysical proposal.
What I'm getting instead are fallacious quibbles based on misuse and/or misunderstanding of accepted definitions and terms.
If that's the best "disagreement" that you can find, then I don't have time to continue arguing with you.
Let's just agree to disagree, and terminate this discussion.
Michael Ossipoff
And what is it that determines whether or not any proposition is true?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
This is where your conflation lies. 'Fact' has two senses; a semantic sense, or the sense in which a fact is considered to be a true proposition, and a substantive sense, a sense in which substantive facts make propositional facts true. Only the latter kinds of facts are equivalent to states of affairs. The former kinds of facts are propositional descriptions of states of affairs.
"Paris is the capital of France' is not a state of affairs, it is a statement. Paris being the capital of France is a state of affairs.This distinction is the first thing you need to get clear. There is no such thing as an "if-then fact". Propositions, not facts, may be in the form of 'if-then'. Tautologies don't count as facts either. You are distorting sensible usage in sophistical ways.
Consider Tarski's formulation: "'Snow is white' is true iff snow is white"; 'Snow is white' is a propositional
or semantic fact if it is a substantive fact that snow is white. For every propositional or semantic fact there is a corresponding substantive fact. Which is to say that for every (propositional) truth there is an actuality.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
It has nothing to do with being dishonest or "rude"; it has to do with frustration at seeing the same simplistic mistakes and vacuous sophistry being peddled over and over.
Apart from the fact that you are equivocating on the meaning of 'fact', there is also the apparent lack of any cogent argument to support your "system".
Why not lay out your argument (if you have one) in a clear, concise form showing your major premise(s) and your conclusion, then you should be able to determine once and for all whether it is even a valid argument let alone a sound one.
Consider this question: In all the time that you have been posting on forums have you found even one person who agrees with your 'argument'?
And here you display your equally superficial knowledge of number theory - I guess you pick that up from a cursory reading of websites as well as your philosophy. In most systems of number theory, the associative property of addition is not an axiom, it is a theorem that can be proven from the axioms of the theory.
I suppose there could be a number theory in which it could appear as an axiom, however, in those theories the conditional you give would be false, since you would need more than just the additive associative axiom to be able to infer that 2+2=4, you would need all the axioms of the system.
If you meant to say "Given all the axioms of number theory, then 2+2=4" - well, firstly, why didn't you say that? and secondly if that is what you meant, then what you meant is a tautology (not a simple one, but a tautology in the mathematical sense of being vacuously true under all interpretations of its symbols).
You might see this as quibbling, but the fact is that you are slapdash in your understanding of the difference between an axiom and a theorem is just one more indication of a slapdash mentality in general, and slapdash mentalities, whatever merit they have, do not merit being taken seriously.
I do need to wheen myself of making a fool of you, but I cannot go cold turkey it seems.
There is at least one often-discussed system of axioms in which associativity is a theorem instead of an axiom.
There's no one right system of axioms.
The arithmetical axiom-system in which associativity is an axiom instead of a theorem is the widely used and cited one.
The existence of other axiom-systems is quite irrelevant to what I said.
To establish an implication like the one that I stated, it typically is not necessary to use every axiom in the system.
With the natural and obvious counting-number definition that I referred to, the use of the additive associative axiom establishes 2 + 2 = 4.
Michael Ossipoff
Michael Ossipoff
I doubt there's such a thing as a noncontroversial metaphysics. Do you say you've got a hold of one?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
What do you mean "a reason why you're in a life"? Is this reason supposed to generate the implication you've singled out?
What do you mean by the phrase "in a life"? One reason I'm alive is that I was born. One reason I was born is that I was conceived. Is this the sort of reason you have in mind?
I’d said:
You said:
Abstract propositions such as mathematical theorems can sometimes be proved. Propositions about particulars in our physical surroundings, such as physical theories, can sometimes be verified by observation.
I’d said:
You said:
You seem to be be saying that a proposition is a statement. That’s widely disagreed-with. A statement is an utterance of a proposition.
A safe bet indeed.
Of course that can reasonably be said about the things that you’re speaking of, and I have no objection to it being said. But you seem to be making a way of saying things into a doctrine about how things are, and a claim that nothing else can validly be said.
There are certain denominational-promoters who come to my door to tell me how things are, and that if I don’t accept and believe their version of how things are, then I’m uneducated and refusing to be educated. Is that what I’m hearing now?
What you’re saying sounds like a Facts-Dualism, and a bit unparsimonious, an unnecessary multiplication of entities.
If the truth of one proposition implies the truth of another proposition, that’s a state-of-affairs.
In other words, it’s a fact.
It’s an implication-fact.
It’s an if-then fact.
…even if that evidently isn’t the official way of saying it.
Then we hear, “If you don’t say things the official way, you can’t expect anyone to understand what you’re saying.”
Nonsense. I’m speaking English, as you are, and trying to say thing more parsimoniously.
You said:
I like that. I like that way of saying it. It’s a better description of experience.
You can change all of my statements of facts into that form. The state-of-affairs form best says what I mean by facts, and is the way I mean for facts to be worded.
For example, how about:
“A implying B”, with the same meaning as “Paris being the capital of France”.
But it could also be said—and maybe it would be a better way of saying it—that an implication is one of the relations that are referred to when it’s said that a fact consists of some objects, and some properties &/or relations that that they have.
I’ll skip to your last paragraph first, and then answer your paragraph before it:
You said:
Yes.
Aside from that, I admit that the physicists Michael Faraday, Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark aren’t on this forum. But they’ve said things that agree with some of the main aspects of my metaphysical proposal.
You said:
Fair enough.
Premises:
1. We’re each, from our own point-of-view, in our experience, in a life in a physical world.
2. There are abstract facts, including abstract implication-facts. …at least in the sense that they can be stated.
Conclusion:
Premise #2 is sufficient metaphysical mechanism and explanation for premise #1.
Why the Premise Implies the Conclusion
In my statement of my metaphysical proposal, earlier in this thread, I told of how any fact about this physical world or about the physical events and relations in our experience, implies, corresponds to and can be said as an if-then fact. I told of how any fact in about this physical world is (at least part of) the “If “ antecedent of some if-then facts, and is the “then” consequent of other if-then facts.
As Michael Faraday pointed out, in 1844, there’s no observation or experiment that shows anything other than mathematical and logical structural-relation. There’s no evidence of anything other than that.
Among the infinity of complex systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts, there inevitably is one whose events and relations are those of your experience.
There’s no reason to believe that your experience is other than that.
[That's the Premise, the Conclusion and their Implication-Relation]
Michael Ossipoff
As a precedent for my argument, I cited abstract if-then facts or implication-facts..
You might reply by standing by your previous statement that there are no if-then facts or implication-facts.
My answer to that would be: See my previous reply to you, above the part where I stated my premise, conclusion and argument. I said what I mean by "if-then facts" or "implication-facts".
So there are implication-facts, as I defined them.
But if you say that you can't understand anything that I say unless I use your own definitions (whether or not they're standard in philosophiy--and it's unlikely that they are, given what I've found at SEP.), then I'll say this:
I trust that we agree that there can be instances of one hypothetical proposition implying another hypothetical proposition. Call it what you want. Substitute that term everywhere that I said "abstract if-then-facts", "abstract implication-facts", abstract facts about hypotheticals" or "abstract implication-facts about hypotheticals".
Michael Ossipoff
My reply to your questions will be along this afternoon, tonight or tomorrow morning. I'll make my best effort to have enough computer-time to send it this afternoon or tonight.
My replies tend to be long, because I like them to be complete, and that can mean that they take a little longer.
Michael Ossipoff
Maybe we could have saved all that unnecessary quibble if I'd just said "Implication" instead of "Implication Fact" or "If-Then Fact".
Or maybe it should be "True Implication".
Obviously one or both of those would work fine as a substitute for "If-Then Fact" or "Implication-Fact".
But, just out of curiosity:
Yes, an implication-proposition is false if its antecedent is true and its consequent is false.
But what about just an implication? One would expect "Implication" to have a stronger meaning than "Implication Proposition". ...that an implication-proposition isn't a genuine implication if the proposition isn't true.
I don't know what the conventional definition says, but I guess it must be one of the following three:
1. Maybe "True" and "False" aren't applicable to an implication (as opposed to an implication-proposition), because something wouldn't even be an implication if it weren't true. P either does or doesn't imply Q. It does, or there isn't that implication. So "True" and "False" don't even apply to an implication.
2. Maybe an implication (as opposed to an implication-proposition) is said to be necessarily true, because otherwise it wouldn't be an implication. This differs from #1, in that, instead of not having truth-value, it necessarily has a truth value of "True", because an Implication (as opposed to just an implication-proposition) is taken to be a true proposition.
3. Maybe "Implication" is taken to just mean "Implication Proposition", in which case of course an implication could be true or false (Of course if it's false, that's because its antecedent is true and its consequent false).
---------------------------
I guess I could say that more briefly by saying that either:
1. An Implication ( as opposed to an implication-proposition) is considered a fact.
2. Just saying "Implication" (as opposed to saying "implication-proposition") is considered to mean "true implication-proposition."
3. An implication is considered to be a proposition that could be true or false (Of course if it's false, that's because its antecedent is true and its consequent false).
--------------------------------------------
Of course I was saying "Implication-Fact" because I wanted to clarify that was referring to a fact. .
--------------------------------------------
If the official interpretation is #1 or #2, then I could substitute "Implication" for "Implication-Fact" and for "If-Then Fact".
If the official interpretation is #3, then it would be necessary to instead substitute "True Implication" for "Implication-Fact" and for "If-Then Fact".
-------------------------.
Though I've read a bit about implications and facts, I don't remember an answer to this question about those 3 possible things hat might be said or meant in the official meaning of "Implication". Of course the standard definition of "Implication" that I read was the same everywhere where I found it. I just don't remember anything in that definition about #1 vs #2 vs #3.
I guess I was saying "Implication-Fact" in order to emphasize that I meant #1 or #2
..but, if if #3 is official, then I wanted to emphasize that I was referring to true implications.
You might say I should do some searching for the answer to that question before mentioning it here.
I guess I bring it up here as a matter of curiosity, because there's been such intense and emphatic objection to the phrases that I've been using, that the subject has already come up, in a big way.
Anyway, bottom-line:
If the official meaning of Implication is consistent with #1 or #2, then I could substitute "Implication" for "Implication-Fact" and for "If-Then Fact".
But if the official meaning of "implication" is consistent with #3, then it would be necessary to instead substitute "True Implication" for "Implication-Fact" or "If-Then Fact".
Michael Ossipoff
And, because an implication is a fact, then an implication-fact is obviously the kind of fact that is an implication.
...a bit redundant, but clear and un-ambiguous.
And I'd long been saying that the if-then facts to which I was referring to were implication facts.
But, even of itself, "if-then fact" was unambiguous. Obviously it would refer to a fact that if one thing is true then another thing is true.
Anyway, even if there could have been misunderstanding before, that silly quibble was cleared yesterday when I said that i was referring to an instance of one proposition implying another, and then calling it an implication (or, unnecessarily and redundantly) a true implication.
Michael Ossipoff
(I don't use nested quotes, because they don't seem to work. I separately quote what I was quoted saying, and the other person's reply)
I'd said:
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Yes. See my previous posts about it in this thread.
I'd said:
You replied:
That's best answered by saying what I don't mean: I don't mean the reason in terms of physical causation in this world. I'm talking about a reason more fundamental and original than that.
Yes.
Nothing other than what you surely must interpret it to mean.
Of course not.
In terms of physical causation in this physical world, you're alive because you were conceived and then born. No one denies that.
But this is a philosophy forum, not a biology forum.
First, a brief summary of my metaphysics (which I describe and justify in more detail in previous posts in this thread):
In the metaphysics that I propose, and described and justified in previous postings in this thread:
There are infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implication-facts (instances of one hypothetical proposition implying another).
Among those infinitely many such systems, there is inevitably one whose events and relations are those of your experience.
There’s no reason to believe that your experience is other than that.
Of course I can’t prove that the Materialist’s objectively, concretely, fundamentally existent physical world, and its objectively, concretely existent stuff and things don’t superfluously exist, as an unverifiable and unfalsiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the hypothetical logical system that I described above.
I emphasize that, in this metaphysics, I regard the experiencer and his/her experience as primary.
So then, why are you in a life?
You’re in a life because there’s a life-experience possibility-story, consisting of a hypothetical logical system such as I’ve described immediately above, having as its protagonist someone just like you…you, in fact.
That’s who/what you are…the hypothetical protagonist in a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story.
You’re in a life, as that protagonist.
If, at the end of this life, you still have subconscious future-orientedness, feelings of incompletion in any regard, &/or any subconscious predisposition, desire or need for life or the things &/or experiences in life, then there will still be a life-experience possibility-story about you
…one that starts with someone like you are during the sleep during death, when there’s no waking-consciousness or knowledge that you were in a life, or knowledge of whether you’re coming or going, or knowledge of the distinction between unconsciousness at the beginning of a life and at the end of a life.
Unconsciousness (absence of waking-consciousness) occurs during the sleep at death. There will come a time when you don’t remember this life, but you retain your subconscious wants, needs, predispositions, etc. …and there’s a life-experience possibility-story that starts about someone like you are at that time during death’s absence of waking-consciousness.
So, if the reason for this life remains, at the end of this life, then what does that suggest?
According to Hindu and Buddhist teachers and writings, nearly everyone has those predispositions, needs, wants, incompletions, etc., that will bring them into a next life.
There are a very, very few people who are so life-completed and lifestyle-perfected, that they won’t have those subconscious needs, wants, drives, inclinations, predispositions, feelings of incompletion, future-orientation, etc. Their placid sleep at the end of their life won’t have any resemblance to the bewilderment and subconscious striving-emotion at the beginning of a life, and hence there won’t be a life-experience possibility-story about them; they won’t be in such a story.
It’s said in Hinduism and Buddhism that every one of us, after many lives, will reach that life-completion and lifestyle-perfection described above. Don’t count on it this time. It’s probably very far off, as it is for nearly everyone.
Michael Ossipoff
Making a fool of yourself, actually.
"Wheen" yourself of that by all means, if you can. :D
I've been away a while and just skim read through the various posts. Aren't we still waiting for your explicit statement of premises, one by one, giving us a valid argument that takes us from those premises to the conclusion that reincarnation happens? I asked you for that right at the beginning of this thread and you've waffled on quite a lot it seems, but logically valid arguments seem impossible to dig out of your words.
...then shall I count run-on sentences too?
Look, the gross mis-spelling, and the run-on sentence in that post are just common sloppinesses that typically, and in MetaphysicsNow's case, accompany other instances of sloppiness, such as MetaphysicsNow's mis-statement that associativity only appears to be an axiom in some systems, and that to prove that 2 + 2 = 4, all of the axioms for the counting numbers are needed. .
...and that's just in one post.
And no, at least in Merriam Webster, "Wheen" isn't listed as meaning "Wean" in any language. Merriam-Webster lists it with an adjective meaning and a noun meaning.
Wean is derived from an Old English word, "Wenian", to accustom or wean.
No. Janus asked me to state, in regards to my argument for my metaphysics, a premise, conclusion, and to tell how the premise implies the conclusion.
His question was about the metaphysics ("your system"), and wasn't about the matter of reincarnation.
Reincarnation isn't part of my metaphysics. It's merely implied by it. And I've clarified that, when I say that, I mean "implied" in the ordinary weaker sense, not in the logic sense. I don't claim to have a "valid argument that takes us from...premises to the conclusion that reincarnation happens."
I've already told how my uncontroversial metaphysics implies reincarnation. ...in the sense of plausibly and convincingly suggesting it. Proving it? I don't say that.
When you asked about the metaphysics, I stated my metaphysical proposal, and my justification for it,
When Janus asked for an argument for my metaphysics, with clearly-labeled premise, conclusion, and statement of how the premise implies the conclusion, I posted that.
I've long been inviting people to specify a mis-statement or un-supported conclusion in my metaphysical proposal.
Of course that invitation still remains.
All the objections and disagreements that I've been getting are quibbles about terminology, which I've now amply answered.
Michael Ossipoff
Can you be more specific about what I said that suggests that?
You mean reincarnation?
From as soon as I began participating in the discussion of reincarnation here, I've been clarifiying that reincarnation isn't part of my metaphysics. I've merely said that reincarnation is implied by my metaphysics. And I've also been clarifying that, when saying that, I don't mean "imply" in its logic sense, but only in its weaker ordinary sense...of strongly or convincingly suggesting.
Michael Ossipoff
Calm down, I didn't say that "wheen" meant what "wean" means. There is a word used in Scotland "wheen" which means "small amount of something" - I think, I stand to be corrected on its meaning, but its existence as a word I'm sure of. I thought maybe MN's being acquainted with that word accounted for his mispelling. Anyway, MetaphysicsNow's own explanation for the spelling mistake makes more sense - he meant wean but wrote "wheen" because he cannot get an author out of his head.
I didn't mean that you were only making fool of yourself via your gross mis-spelling, and your run-on sentence.
I was referring also to your mis-statements in that post, regarding associativity only appearing to be an axiom in one system, and your silly statement that all of the arithmetical axioms are needed in order to prove that 2+2=4.
...and that's just in one post,.
Michael Ossipoff
No, I asked you for premises and a sound argument (and all sound arguments are logically valid ones by the way), and you said you would provide at least the premises of the argument:
You still haven't done that.
Though I answered that, I'd like to also say this:
One thing that I haven't found in reply, is a specific substantive and valid disagreement with what i said in my metaphysical proposal, or the specification of an incorrect statement or un-supported conclusion in that proposal.
You asked me for an argument for my metaphysical proposal, lising premise, conclusion, and a statement of how one implies the other..
I've posted those.
Now then, do you disagree with one or both of my premises?
(For "if-then fact", we can substitute "implication" (or true implication, if you prefer) or any other term that you like, for an instance of one proposition implying another..)
...or do you find an incorrect statement or unsupported conclusion in my discussion of why my conclusion is implied by my premises?
Michael Ossipoff
I think the point is that nobody can really tell what your premises are. I suppose one of them must be
"There are if-then facts"
But when you give examples of what these if-then facts are supposed to be, you just give tautologies, and then refuse to engage in a discussion about the distinction between logical truth and substantive truth that risks being conflated when identifying tautologies as a kind of fact.
It's far from clear what you're saying in that post, but:
I've complied with Janus's request that I post, as an argument for my metaphysics, premise(s), conclusion, and as statement regarding how the former imply the latter. I did that
And, before that, I posted, in this thread, a complete statement of my metaphysical proposal and its uncontroversial justification.
It's easy for you to say "You haven't done that."
...but can you or can't you specify an incorrect premise, an incorrect statement, or an unsupported conclusion in my metaphysical proposal, or my argument for it?
As for reincarnation, let's get clear about this: I don't claim to have proof of it, or a logically-sound argument for it. I've merely told how my metaphysics implies it (but not in the strong sense that "imply" has in logic).
Nor is reincarnation part of my metaphysics, though it's implied by it.
Michael Ossipoff
???
Three question marks - does that indicate that you are not aware of the proof for 1+1=2 within Peano arithmetic? Sorry. Here's a straightforward presentation which will give some context to the remark I made about the definition of the symbol "2".
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/51551.html
First, definition of some counting-numbers:
Let "1" mean the multiplicative identity.
Let "2" mean 1 + 1
Let "3" mean 2 + 1
Let "4" mean 3 + 1
By those definitions, 2+ 2 means (1+1) + (1+1).
The additive associative axiom says:
a + (b + c) = (a + b) + c.
Applying that axiom:
(1+1) + (1+1) = ((1+1) +1) + 1
Because, by definition, 1 + 1 = 2:
((1+1) + 1) + 1 = (2+1) + 1
So (1+1) + (1+1) = (2+1) + 1
Because, by definition, 2 + 1 = 3:
(2+1) + 1 = 3 + 1
So (1+1) + (1+1) = 3 + 1
Because, by definition 3 + 1 = 4:
(1+1) + (1+1) = 4
Because, by definition, 1 + 1 = 2:
2 + 2 = 4 QED
(As I said before, the use of the multiplicative identity implies acceptance of the multiplicative identity axiom.)
Michael Ossipoff
I didn't notice the apostrophe.
I've heard of Peano arithmetic, but that wasn't my topic.
In answer to your question, the system of axioms that I'm using is the one that is usually used, stated and cited. ...the one in which, for one thing, associativity is an axiom, not a theorem.
Michael Ossipoff
I'm speaking honestly when I say that I have no idea what you're talking about.
I've thoroughly discussed and answered the objections to my use of "if-then fact", and I've obligingly substituted another term, "implication". ...and, if that isn't suitable to you, then I invite you or anyone to choose a term for referring to an instance of one proposition implying another, and substitute it for "implication", the term that I use in this post.
By "substantive truth", do you mean an alleged objective, fundamental, concrete "existence" for our physical world and its things and its stuff?
I've admitted that I can't prove that Materialism's objectively fundamentally, concretely existent physical world, and is concretely and objectively existent stuff and things don't superficially exist, as an unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the hypothetical complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypotheticals, that I've been referring to.
Michael Ossipoff
Well, I don't want to turn this into a thread about mathematical logic, but Peano arithmetic is one of the standard ways of defining the natural numbers, so I'd have to challenge you to provide a more "usually used, stated or cited" system of axioms for doing that.
In any case, you cannot define "1" this way (as you do):
without already having defined multiplication (recursively) over the natural numbers, which means that the natural numbers need already to have been defined within your system, which is what the Peano axioms do. Perhaps you have some non-standard set of axioms to capture what a natural number is supposed to be? But in any case, you will not be able to infer 2+2=4 without all those axioms. MetaphysicsNow is right about that and you are wrong.
Now we are getting somewhere. Idealists and anti-realists more generally can (and have) made the distinction between substantive truth and logical truth, so no, one does not need to be a materialist in order for the distinction to make sense. You seem to be a fan of online philosophy encyclopedias - look up "logical truth" and see how complex a notion it is and how various philosophers have tried to distinguish it from substantive truth. As far as I can tell, every example of if-then fact that you introduce is an example of a logical truth, but substantive truths are the ones that concern the empirical world (whether that world be independent of our coming to know it or not). Since we, as sentient beings, are in the empirical world, it is substantive truth that will have a bearing on whether or not we can be reincarnated, not logical truth.
Now, if you want to argue that there is no genuine distinction between logical truth and substantive truth, that might be an interesting discussion to have. Take a look at Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" for example.
I've already acknowledged that there are other arithmetical axiom systems, including at least one (that of Peano) in which associativity is a theorem instead of an axiom.
I've already acknowledged that, and I've already clarified that it's irrelevant to what I've been saying.
As I said, the arithmetical axiom system for the counting-numbers, with respect the the addition and multiplication operations, that typically and usually used, stated and cited is the one in which associativity is an axiom, not a theorem.
I'm not going to debate that.
See above.
Incorrect.
The multiplicitive-identity axiom for the counting numbers says that there is an element of the counting-numbers (call it "1") such that, for every element, a, of the counting-numbers, a X 1 = a.
And yes, there's no reason why I can't say "Let '1' mean the multiplicative identity".
How very commendable that you like Peano arithmetic. But It doesn't bear on what I've said.
It's time to agree to disagree on that.
But I'll add that the common arithmetical axiom-system that I refer to doesn't include a definition of multiiplication or addition, but merely mentions them as two operations, with respect to which the axioms for the number systems are stated.
Michael Ossipoff
Please provide a link to a site where this "usually used stated and cited" axiomatic system is set out clearly, preferably by a mathematician.
Oh, ok--I wasn't trying to evade that question or issue. I just previously didn't understand that it was being raised.
I'd said:
Quoting jkg20
Without them, how could I translate what is being said by people who use their terminology?
...or how complex it (along with everything else) is in the minds and writings of academic philosophers, who must constantly have things to write about, in order to publish, and not thereby not perish. :)
Yes.
Isn't subjective idealism the ultimate empiricism? All that we know about the physical world is from our experience. I'm all for empiricism.
But our experience, including our physics-experiments, is experience of logical/mathematical structural relation. As I said, there's no evidence that our physical world is other than that.
That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that objective or substantive truth about an objective substantive physical world is a fiction of our declarative/indicative grammar, and a long habit of (sometimes subconscious) Materialism.
Regarding the abstract logical implications, about hypotheticals, that I refer to, and the complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications--I'm saying that there's no reason to believe that any of the antecedents of those implications are true.
What there metaphysically, discussably, describably is, are willow-the-whisp, ethereal, insubstantial logical systems. Period (full-stop)..
I'll check it out.
We aren't just in the empirical world. We're each the center, and the fundamental, essential and primary component of each our empirical world.--which is a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story.whose only meaning is with respect to and in terms of us, its protagonist.
As for reincarnation, the complete insubstantiality of that hypothetical story makes reincarnation no seem so implausible. As I said, if the reason for our being in this life still obtains at the end of this life, then what does that suggest?
Anyway, though I definitely argue for my metaphysics, I don't set out to aggressively push the reincarnation issue. But I comment on it, because it is something that's discussed a fair amount.
Someone said that the matter of reincarnation doesn't matter, because we'll never know if there's reincarnation. Yes, whether we're reincarnated or not, we won't know about it. If a new life starts, we won't know about this one.
In fact, I've been saying that, not only are past lives unknowable, but they're also completely indeterminate. It isn't true that there were or weren't previous lives.
I don't agree that it won't matter. After all, our experience will be different, depending on whether or not there' s reincarnation. The fact that you won't eventually say, "Aha, he was wrong!" or "Ok, he was right." isn't important.
But either would be ok, however it is. The end of this life is sleep, and there isn't a need to believe in some account of where it leads.
I'm just saying that my metaphysics implies reincarnation. It's of interest as a matter of discussion, as a consequence of metaphysics, which makes it a philosophical topic. And, as I said, there's much discussion about it.
I regard it as a metaphysical matter, not a religious matter. I don't claim that metaphysics, discussion and description cover all that is.
If anyone says it does, remind him that no finite dictionary can non-circularly define any of its words.
Any of Reality that isn't fully discussable and describable, I'd call meta-metaphysics. It goes without saying that there's little that can be said about it. It isn't a topic for a philosophy forum, where we discuss what's discussable.
Michael Ossipoff
If it is a fact at all it is a logical or semantic fact. Paris being the capital of France is a substantive fact. See the difference? As I see it is on account of this difference that your 'argument' founders, or flounders.
Here's the arithmetical-axioms link that you asked for:
https://sites.math.washington.edu/~hart/m524/realprop.pdf
Michael Ossipoff
I'd said:
Quoting Janus
Yes. Yours is a physical fact. You can go to Paris, and walk into the Capitol buildings from which the country is governed, and painfully stub your toe on the Capitol steps.
In a recent post, and, in fact, in all of my posts about my metaphysical proposal, I've emphasized that the notion of objective, substantive existence for this physical world and its things and its stuff, is a fiction of declarative/indicative grammar.
Check out my recent reply to jkg20, where I answer about that in more detail.
I don't recognize the "substantial" or "objective" facts that you believe in, as something distinct from logical facts.
You haven't pointed to a specific false-premise, incorrect statement, or un-supported conclusion in my metaphysical proposal or my arguments for it.
Michael Ossipoff
There is certainly a logical distinction between logical truth and substantive truth. One might want to argue, as MO does, that there is no genuine metaphysical or ontological distinction, but then such a metaphysical argument could hardly be "non-controversial", as MO so mistakenly claims his metaphysics is.
So, you obviously deny the indispensable logical distinction between semantic facts and substantive facts, because it allows you to continue believing in your own sophistry. Well done! Well, I'm done too: well done responding to your lack of cogent argument!
Yeah, normally in New Age circles that sort of thing is called "metaphysical." I don't see how reincarnation can be connected to metaphysics strictly so-called.
Precisely. So, in order to get 2+2=4 out of this system of axioms for the real numbers, you need already a recursive definition of addition, otherwise you are stuck with 0 and 1 and the reals between them. Sure, you can add definitions (1+1)=2 , (2+1) =3, (3+1)=4... but either that is eliptical for defining addition recursively (as per Peano arithmetic for the natural numbers) or you need to supplement the axioms you link to with axioms for the existence of 2, 3 and 4. The system of arithmetic for the real number system trades off of the system of arithmetic for the natural number system and usually in order to prove that 2+2=4 you will need all the axioms of natural number arithmetic. In all cases you will need more than just the truth of the axiom of associativity for addition, so your conditional:
is false, since (without all the required additional definitions and axioms) the antecedent could be true and the consequent false.
Other than what? Other than a system of relations? Relations relate things to other things, so the physical world - whatever else it is - certainly includes those things that stand in relations to each other, Metaphysics needs to address the nature of the things that stand in relations to each other as well as to the nature of the relations in which they do so stand.
Suit yourself. I've amply covered the topic in previous posts to this thread..
Michael Ossipoff
Experiencing, feeling, hearing itself is a proof of something beyond physical universe. In a pure material universe, chemical machines exist but consciousness can't
I mean just think about it, you could build a robot but you can never make it aware of itself. Trees, animals even babies, all have feelings and thoughts; however no one is feeling, thinking, they're just closed biological machines. Interesting, don't you think?
Yes.
...but not necessarily objectively-existent things.
Relations also relate hypothetical, nonexistent things to eachother. Are Slitheytoves and Jaberwockeys existent things?
If the Slitheytove content of a room consists of 2 Slitheytoves by the door, and 2 other Slitheytoves near the wall opposite the door, then there are 4 Slitheyitoves in that room.
Relations don't imply or require things.
There are abstract facts, at least in the sense that we can state and discuss them.
In mentions of abstract facts, there's no need or justification for a stipulation "...provided that there's something else with some kind of 'objective existence' ", whatever that means.
Yes, that's another question: What do you even mean when you say that there are "objectively-existent" things?
When we experience "things", our experience is of their relation to our own body, and their relation to, and comparison to, eachother.
As I've said, and as Faraday pointed out in 1844, there's no evidence for those "objectively-existent" things that you believe in...no evidence for anything other than the relations that we actually experience, observe and measure.
Of course. They're as "real" as the phiysical universe itself. Those things are part of your life-experience possibility-story.
The physical world and its things are real and existent in the context of your life-experience possibility-story.
But there's no reason to believe that they have some kind of "objective existence", whatever you mean by that.
...and it doesn't need to make unsupported assumptions about "objective-existence" of those things, especially when you can't say what you mean by "objectively-existent".
As I've said, I can't prove that the "objectively", fundamentally, "concretely" existent world that you believe in, and its "objectively" and "concretely" existent things, and stuff, don't superflously exist as an unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the uncontroversially-inevitable complex system of inter-referring logical implications that I've described.
Michael Ossipoff
I refer you to my previous posting in which I showed how the additive-associative axiom implies 2+2=4, by a definition of some counting-numbers in terms of the multiplicative-identity and addition.
But, as I said, it's time to agree to disagree, and to discontinue this conversation.
Michael Ossipoff
Agreed.
Yes, you’re the central, fundamental and primary component of your life-experience possibility-story. In fact, you’re not just “a component” of it. Your its center, meaning, origin and reason-for-being . Its “there” because of and for you. Your experiences are its whole subject, its whole point, content, meaning and relevance.
The individual and hir (his/her) experience are primary in my metaphysics.
And yes, even as the individual that you are, death doesn’t end your experience, because obviously, in your experience, there never comes a time of no experience. Death is an increasingly deep sleep.
I’ve suggested, in agreement with Eastern tradition, that most of us don’t reach the deepest extent of that sleep, because, before that, during a less-deep absence of waking-consciousness, when subconscious emotional predispositions and inclinations remain, we find ourselves in the beginning of a life, an experience-story consistent with our predispositions and the person who are at that time, a beginning life that our experience at that time is about. …one which is consistent with the person we are at that time.
I don’t believe in the Western traditional eternal Heaven or Hell.
Reincarnation needn’t be to exactly the same world as the one that we left, though it seems likely to be to a very similar one.
Science is un-duly worshipped as a religion in our society.
What-is, is more remarkable than any of fiction’s magic. …and better than many people here realize.
Yes, Consciousness is primary.
I mean individual Consciousness, when speaking about metaphysics. But I agree that Advaita has a valid meta-metaphysical point about the impression that there doesn't seem to be important distinction between individuals. ...and of course at a person's end-of-lives, s/he doesn't know or care that there ever was, or even could be, such things as identity or individuality (or time, events problems, situations, want, need, lack or incompletion).
I claim that, even if Materialism were true, humans, animals, and human-duplicating robots would be conscious.
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I claim that any robot that can duplicate the actions of a human, must have the consciousness of a human. …in order to do that.
Among purposefully-responsive devices, it’s completely arbitrary where we draw the line to say what is “conscious”, or what has “feeling”.
Purposefully-responsive devices include humans, other mammals, other vertebrates including birds and reptiles, other animals, including insects, and even protozoans…and including plants, bacteria, viruses, mousetraps, refrigerator light-switches and thermostats.
We can arbitrarily draw the line wherever we feel like, regarding what is “conscious”, or what has “feeling”.
Insects obviously are conscious and have feeling, and it’s quite obvious when they feel fear. Bacteria, when they swim, swim away from what things they don’t like, and towards things they like. Plants respond purposefully, sometimes on the short timescales characteristic of animals. Viruses choose to bore into cells that they’ve determined are the kind of cell that they can use.
I’ve defined “a conscious being” as a purposefully-responsive device that is sufficiently similar to the speaker that the speaker feels kinship with it.
Michael Ossipoff
Of course not, and there are no relations that relate Slitheytoves to Jaberwockeys either. There are logical relations that relatestatements about Slitheytoves to statements about Jaberwockeys. However, there are distinct kinds of relata and relations which concern existent things and which your metaphyics remains utterly mute on because your metaphysics deals only with the logical relation between statements not the physical relations between existent things. That is a pretty significant gap in a metaphysical system. Please do not try to obfuscate the issue by equating "physical" with "material", everything I say here is consistent with an idealistic metaphysics.
This specific issue is not about agreement or disagreement, this is about you being wrong about what one can prove in mathematics given a set of axioms. Just admit that you have a scanty knowledge of number theory, drop those kind of examples from your posts, and address the lacunae in your metaphysics.
jkg20 doesn't know what number theory is. He's been misusing that term for some time.
Here's a link to an article, from Brown University, explaining what number theory is.
https://www.math.brown.edu/~jhs/frintch1ch6.pdf
Demonstration of ignorance of the meanings of terms that one is using, and such things as run-on sentences like:
Quoting jkg20
...demonstrate sloppiness that typically and unsurprisingly also shows itself in other ways, such as the content of what jkg20 is saying.
Quoting jkg20
Oops! jkg20 forgot to say where, in particular, my proof of 2+2=4 contained an error, mis-statement or unsupported conclusion.
I showed that 2+2=4 is implied by the axiom-system that I posted a link to.
And no, it wasn't necessary to use all of those axioms.
Michael Ossipoff
Jkg20 says:
Facts consist of relations among, or properties of, things, referred to as “objects”. Objects can be abstract objects, and needn’t have “physical” “existence”.
Oops! jkg20 forgot to answer my question about what he means by “existent”.
Anyway, all relations, among whatever kinds of things, are still only relations. Relations are what are observed and measured and can be reported, described and recorded.
…when jkg20 can’t say what he means by it?
…but what does jkg90 mean by “existent”? Who knows.
jkg20 isn’t saying.
And physical relations are still only relations.
Physical things? As I said, any fact about the physical world implies, corresponds, to and can be said as a logical implication.
…and is (at least part of) the antecedent of some implications, and is the consequent of other logical implications.
There’s no evidence, measurement or reason to believe that the physical world consists of other than those implications.
Tell me about an experience of yours. You'll be telling about relations.
There’s physical experience, observation and measurement….of relation. A person’s experience of physical things consists of experience of their relation to that person’s body. Likewise, scientific physical observations and measurements are of relation.
Physics is about relation. As I said, in the physical world, as Faraday pointed out, there’s no evidence for other than mathematical and logical relation.
If jkg20 believes that Faraday was mistaken, and that there’s evidence that the physical world consists of other than mathematical and logical relation, then he should feel free to share with us what his evidence is.
Michael Ossipoff
— jkg20
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But, for Janus, the matter isn’t subject to discussion, but is instead a matter of doctrine.
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Janus says:
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Maybe Janus means that, if there were some kind of metaphysical truth that differs from other metaphysical truth by being “substantive” (whatever that would mean), then it would be different from metaphysical truth that’s not “substantive”. :D
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Anyway, what, exactly, does Janus mean by “substantial”?
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Janus isn’t saying.
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Janus is confusing two different meanings for “uncontroversial”.
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My metaphysics is controversial in the sense that there are many who’d want to disagree with it because it isn’t consistent with what they already believe. By that meaning, there’s little that isn’t “controversial”.
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Then what’s uncontroversial about it?:
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That there are abstract facts, in the sense that they can be stated.
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That therefore there are also infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract facts consisting of implications, about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
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That, among that infinity of such complex logical systems, there inevitably is one whose events and relations are those of your experience.
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That there’s no experimental evidence that your experience is other than that.
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…given, for example, that every fact about this physical world implies, corresponds to and can be said as an implication.
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...and is at least part of the antecedent of some implications, and is the consequent of other implications.
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That’s what’s uncontroversial.
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As I’ve said, I can’t prove that the Materialist’s fundamentally, “objectively”, “substantially”, “concretely” existent universe, and its “objectively”, “substantially”, and “concretely” existent things, and stuff, don’t superfluously exist, as an unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the uncontroversially-inevitable logical system that I’ve described.
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?Michael Ossipoff
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I haven’t been speaking of communication.
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Facts are states of affairs (or obtaining states of affairs, if you believe that there’s such a thing as a “state of affairs” that doesn’t obtain) that consist of one or more properties of one or more things, or a relation among two or more things. (Those things are often referred to as “objects”.)
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There’s no way of knowing if a fact, by that definition (actually a combination of two definitions) can be “insubstantive” as Janus means “substantive”.
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Janus hasn’t said what he means by “substantive”. I looked for a definition of “substantive fact”, but didn’t find one. Janus hasn’t shared with us just what it is that is lacking from a fact that isn’t “substantive”.
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“Sophistry” means “subtly deceptive argument”. Calling a proposal “sophistry” isn’t the same as specifying a an incorrect statement or unsupported conclusion in it.
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While Janus has been continually spouting angry namecalling language, he has been invited to specify a particular error, mis-statement, or unsupported conclusion. He hasn’t done so.
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Janus evidently is a believer in namecalling as a tactic to depend on, and evidently a believer in the common Internet notion that the one who does the most namecalling is right.
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So there. Janus refutes my argument by saying that it isn’t cogent. :D
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I thought that it would be necessary to show that one of the argument’s premises is false, or that the statement of why the premises imply the conclusion contains at least one error, fallacy, incorrect statement, or unsupported conclusion.
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Contrary to what Janus seems to want to imply, there isn’t consensus about his interpretation of “truth”. There are “minimal”, “deflationary” and “redundancy” interpretations of “truth”, and there’s widely divergent philosophical opinion on the interpretation and meaning of “truth”.
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Here’s something I found that seems to say what Janus is saying:
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Main articles: Logical truth, Criteria of truth, and Truth value
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But could that “absolute sense” for metaphysical truth be illusory? Sure. I suggest that there’s no reason to believe in it. …aside from the fact that it’s unclear what is even meant by it.
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I suggest that it’s unduly presumptuous for “the metaphysician” to claim to speak of “absolute truth”.
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That meaning for “fact” is more limited than the widely accepted definition of fact as a state of affairs, or an obtaining state of affairs, or as a combination of one or more properties of one or more things, or a relation among things….which definitions don’t say anything about validity or applicability only in only one world or only under one possible interpretation.
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Maybe “obtaining” is being used to mean “referring or applying only to our own particular world”, like the widely accepted meaning of “actual”.
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There are abstract implications that don’t only refer to our world (but which might refer to it too). So, if “obtaining” means “referring or applying only to our own particular world”, then the word “obtaining” is unnecessarily limiting in a definition of “fact”.
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Maybe that “absolute truth” that’s being referred to as opposed to “logical truth” is what I’ve been calling “meta-metaphysics”. Maybe that’s what philosophical articles mean by “meta-logic” too.
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Meta-metaphysics, as I mean it, doesn’t lend itself to description and discussion, argument or assertion.
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…and of course isn’t part of metaphysical discussion.
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I haven’t claimed that logical truth covers, applies to and describes all of Reality, all that is. …only that it covers, applies to and describes metaphysics and the things of metaphysics (because I define metaphysics by the applicability of words, discussion, and complete description to it and its things).
Sorry, but that doesn't make them less true, or disqualify them as facts by the definitions that I stated above.
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Anyway it isn’t possible to answer Janus, because he hasn’t been at all clear with us regarding what he means by “substantive”.
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…and hasn’t specified a particular false premise, incorrect statement, fallacy, error or unsupported conclusion in my argument for my metaphysics.
We've been hearing a lot of angry-noises about my metaphysical proposal, from Janus, for example, but no one has accepted my invitation to specify a false premise, error, fallacy, incorrect statement or unsupported conclusion.
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Michael Ossipoff
I do not need experimental evidence to know that I have experience. Indeed, the very idea of experimental evidence presupposes the idea that someone has already had experience of some kind. So there is at least one substantive non-if-then fact (to use your curious terminology): that there is experience.
What is my experience experience of?
Well some of my experiences are of instances of colour and shape, they tend to get called visual experiences. Again, I don't need experimental evidence to know this - again, insofar as experimental evidence is visual evidence, the existence of such things is presupposed.
So, there's another non-if-then fact: There are experiences of colour and shape.
And now as metaphysicians we can start asking questions about what these experiences of colour and shape are. Can we take an act-object view of them, for instance? If we can, then not only are there experiences of colour and shape, but there are also instances of colour and shape - and so yet another non-if-then-fact emerges for us to investigate.
Looks like we can do metaphysics without if-then facts. Of course, Descartes got there before me - maybe you've heard of him. If you haven't, I suggest you try reading his Meditations, it pretty much kick-starts modern philosophy.
I didn’t say that there are no non-if-then facts in our experience.
I said that every fact about the physical world (in our experience, of course) implies, corresponds to, and can be said as, an if-then fact.
(I like to call an implication an “if-then fact”, because everyone knows what that means, where “implication” might not be clear to people who haven’t read about logic terms. I’m sorry if that non-standard term has caused trouble, but it’s understandable to more people.)
I also said that every fact about the physical world is (at least part of) the antecedent of some if-then facts, and is the consequent of other if-then facts.
That was a mis-wording, and I apologize if it led to justified mis-understanding of what I meant. Here’s what I meant:
Every fact about the physical world (in your experience, of course) corresponds to a proposition that is (at least part of) the antecedent of some if-then facts, and is the consequent of other if-then facts.
In particular, if the physical fact that you experience is F, then the proposition that I’m referring to is the proposition that F. The proposition about F…the proposition “F is a fact”.
When I first started stating my metaphysics, that mis-wording was a bit of sloppiness that has remained in the proposition…until when I’m correcting it now.
Someone, at this point, could say that now I’m introducing a new metaphysical brute-fact that every physical fact corresponds to, and is underlain by, a proposition about that fact.
Not so.
The if-then facts about those propositions are uncontroversially inevitably there, and that’s no unexplained brute-fact.
Then what about the perceived, experienced, non-if-then facts? What’s their explanation?
Well, doesn’t it go without saying that, for efficiently dealing with its situation in its world, an animal would do better to treat what it has to deal with as facts? …and therefore to perceive it as facts? What would be the point of a wood-rat being a philosopher instead of a practical wood-rat? Surely, humans, too, are designed by evolution to be practical before philosophical in that regard, as their initial default interpretation of their world.
I’ve been saying that we’re used to declarative/indicative grammar, though conditional grammar describes the inevitable complex system of logical if-then facts (implications) whose events and relations comprise our life-experience possibility-story.
To reply to another comment in the post that I’m replying to:
Of course your experience doesn’t need experimental evidence. Your experience is all the evidence you need or have.
But, because so many people worship science and measurement, I said that there’s no experimental evidence or measurement establishing that your experience consists of other than (a system of implications, and a practical perception of unconditional facts corresponding to…) a hypothetical system of inter-referring hypothetical if-then facts (implications) about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
To answer something else that you said:
Maybe metaphysics can be done without (any?) if-then facts. Of course it goes without saying that there are many metaphysicses, and innumerable conceivably-say-able ones. Nearly all of them make assumptions and posit brute-facts. Mine is different in that regard.
Michael Ossipoff
...and even though Faraday pointed out that there's no reason to believe in the Materialist's objectively-existent stuff or things...
...That gets some support from Vedantist spiritual-teachers who speak of a sense in which our factual world is illusory.
(...though of course it's real enough in its own context and the context of our lives.)
Nisargadatta said that, from the point-of-view of the Sage, nothing has ever happened.
Michael Ossipoff
Mushy? Yes, but often overlooked.
Until we start warring with aliens, then shit hits the fan.
Hopefully they have adapted to understand the basics for perpetual peace if such a thing were possible, but I doubt it.
Well, as for the non-if-then facts of our daily lives, I don;t call that part of my metaphysics. The apparent non-conditional facts of our lives are just how we animals are designed to deal with our world in which we must live. Practicality, not metaphysics.
Not how things really, metaphysically, are.
Their truth isn't metaphysical. But, if I were to swear in court that what I'm about to say is true, and is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I know that there's no reason to believe that any of it is metaphysically true, that doesn't mean that I'm violating my oath and committing perjury, because it's understood that, in court, they aren't talking about metaphysical truth. It's only about what could be called "worldly truth".
Aside from that, Nisargadatta said that anything that can be said is a lie (because, of course, words can't accurately describe Reality), even in metaphysics.
Pragmatic worldly "truth" I don't call metaphysics. As for Materialism, as I said, I don't claim to have proof that it isn't superflously true as an unverifialbe, unfalsifiable brute-fact...alongside and duplicating the events and relations of my proposed logical system..
I wouldn't say it that way. When you referred to the latter, you're referring to metaphysical if-then facts. I wouldn't say that they're used to express the non-if-then facts of our everyday experience and pragmatic life. But they're the metaphysical reality that underlies our pragmatic experential world and life.
Sure, that's the other objection to my proposal, with a difficultly-explained answer.But it isn't as difficult as your first objection ("How could something completely hypothetical seem so non-conditionally factual and real?")
I've been answering this 2nd objection as follows:
I make no claim for any reality or existence for the abstract if-then facts, or the infinitely-many systems of them.
What's their reality got to do with anything?
About the "existence" of those abstract if-then facts, "there are" those facts in the sense that we can mention them and state them (though we of course can't state all of them, partly due to time limitations).
That's the only "existence" I claim for them.
Can that be called a "brute-fact", if the only "existence" that I claim for them is their discussability and mentionability by us?
I'm not saying that those if-then facts have any other existence or reality. So, if that's a brute-fact, then it's a particularly un-blatant one.
And, if their metnionability and discussability is a brute-fact, it's a universally-agreed one.
I guess maybe you could call it a special kind of completely uncontroversial brute-fact. Remember, I don't claim that words can describe or explain everything. I don't claim that metaphysics can explain or cover all of Reality,
How could anyone tell an ultimate explanation, if words can't describe or explain Reality?
My proposal is only for a metaphysical explanation for what metaphysically is. Words can't explain why there's metaphysics, and the abstract if-thens at its basis. So, in that sense, a metaphysics can only be a description, not a complete explanation.
The inability to explain why there's metaphysics and why there are abstract facts that we can mention and discuss...That isn't a fault peculiar to my metaphysics. It's in the nature of metaphysics, because words can't explain, describe or cover all of Reality.
You can call this a cop-out and an evasion, but if pressed for an explanation of that completely uncontroversial "brute-fact", I'd say that its "explanation" can only be meta-metaphysical, by which I mean inaccessible to words.
A few modern philosophers have expressed agreement with Aristotle, about his meta-metaphysical suggestion that Good is the basis of what is.
I've been emphasizing that each one of the infinitely-many systems of inter-referring abstract logical if-then facts about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things is quite independent of anything outside it. ...and neither has nor needs any "reality" in any frame of reference or context other than its own inter-referring context.
I'd like to comment more about your other, first, objection, but I'd like to discuss that in a separate post, because each of these two objections deserves its own post.
So I have more to say, about your 1st objection "How can something completely hypothetical seem so non-conditionally factual and real?". I might be able to discuss that in a post this afternoon, but tomorrow is more likely.
Michael Ossipoff
You replied: "I wouldn't say it that way. When you referred to the latter, you're referring to metaphysical if-then facts. I wouldn't say that they're used to express the non-if-then facts of our everyday experience and pragmatic life. But they're the metaphysical reality that underlies our pragmatic experential world and life."
Regarding this part of your reply
"I wouldn't say that they're used to express the non-if-then facts of our everyday experience and pragmatic life."
Of course they are not used that way, we use straightforward declarative statements to express non-if-then-facts. If-then facts are expressed using conditional statements of the form if P then Q.
Regarding this part of your reply
Presumably by the "they" you mean your if-then facts. You seem to be contradicting yourself directly when you then go on and say.
You mean because, in the first of those two quotes, I used the word "reality".
In that sentence, I didn't mean "reality" literally, and I didn't mean to imply objective reality. I didn't mean to imply that those abstract implications are real in some sense. I shouldn't have used that word,
I don't claim that there's any reality to anything described or explained by metaphysics. ...including the abstract if-then facts that are the structural basis of our lives and world.
Of course obviously our lives and world, are "real" in their own context, just as each of those complex systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypothetical propositions neither needs nor has any reality other than in its own inter-referring context, I don't claim objective reality or existence for those things.
Michael Ossipoff
Like one or two other people on this site, it seems that as soon as you are caught out in a contradiction, rather than rethink your position, you simply change the meanings of words. I'll leave you now to go ahead and play Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty all by yourself, and I suggest @jkg20 do the same.
Sorry, you didn't catch me in a contradiction.
My position on the matter of whether or not the abstract-facts are "real" has been consistent. I've been consistently saying that I don't claim any objective reality for them, or for anything based on them.
People often speak of the story-reality in a story, or a "dream reality". When doing so, then don't mean that those "realities" are objective reality. Whether you like it or not, "reality" is used with different meanings. It often refers to something with less than objective reality. It often refers to something that the speaker regards as unreal.
You're grasping at straws. Nice try.
Michael Ossipoff
"Real" and "Reality" are used with respect to contexts,and need to be interpreted contextually. ...aside from not even being metaphsically-defined.
For example, from the first introduction of my proposal here, I've been saying that of course this physical world is real in the context of our lives, and that our lives are real in their own context.
Likewise, I've been saying that a system of inter-referring abstract implication-facts about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things needn't have any reality or existence other than in its own inter-referring context, and that I make no claim that it does.
I've been consistently saying that there's no particular reason to believe that either has any objective reality or existence, and that I make no claim that they do. ...though I don't know exactly what "objective reality" would mean.
There's obviously a worldly, everyday "reality' (and a storybook "reality", with respect to some storybook's story). That worldly, everyday reality is underlain by a different metaphysical "reality". ...without claiming objective reality, or "reality" as meant more demandingly in philosophical discussion, for either,.
So, as I said, the "contradiction" objection was a desperate and shabby grasp-at-straws.
Michael Ossipoff
I said I was going to post more thoroughly and systematically about “How can something completely hypothetical seem so non-conditionally real?”. But first I’d like to say a few more things about the claim that “there are abstract facts, in the sense that we can refer to and speak of them” is a brute-fact in my metaphysics:
1. When we say that a metaphysics (such as Materialism) posits a brute-fact, we’re saying that the proponent of that metaphysics expects you to believe the brute-fact without justification. Then I’ll remind that I’m not asking anyone to take my word for it that there are abstract facts, in the sense that we can mention or refer to them. That’s common knowledge, and I’ve used it as a premise in the argument for my metaphysics.
2. What if I can’t explain why there are abstract facts, in the sense stated above? It would be like saying that I can’t explain why there’s metaphysics. Is that somehow a fault of my metaphysical proposal? I’ve been saying all along that I make no claim that words, concepts, discussion and description cover &/or explain all that is.
So, if there being abstract facts, in the sense that we can mention or refer to them, or if there being metaphysics, were unexplainable by me, that would be fine, because I make no claim that words can explain everything.
3, But, as I’ve also said, we should try to explain as much as possible within metaphysics.
I suggest that maybe the claim that an explanation is needed and lacking for why there are abstract facts, in the sense that we can mention or refer to them, can be answered.
This has been discussed here before.
In reply to a claim that there could have not been any abstract facts, someone answered that if there were no facts, it would be a fact that there are no facts.
Someone else then countered that there could have been just one fact, a fact that there are no facts other than that one fact that there are no facts other than itself.
For one thing, that would be an unexplained brute-fact.
But I’ve suggested what sounds to me like a better answer:
When bringing up abstract facts, and a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts (implication-facts), I’ve emphasized that they’re completely independent of any larger context, any context other than their own local inter-referring context. …and any sort of external permission or medium.
If you appreciate the completeness of that independence, then you’ll understand why it would be meaningless to say that there could have been some global prohibition or negation of all possible abstract facts. To believe in such a thing implies a belief in some kind of universal global propagating-medium for permission, or a common-context for all facts, like some kind of potting-soil. There’s no reason to believe in such a thing.
And if someone wanted to say that facts only exist for an experiencer, that’s fine, because the system of facts that I’m talking about is with respect to an experiencer. I’ve been saying that the experiencer is primary and central in the subjective metaphysics that I propose, and that all of the facts in your experience-story are with respect to, about, and for your experience and you.
(But, though the system that I speak of, your life-experience possibility-story, is experiencer-based, I’ve also said that I don’t support the animal-chauvinism of a belief that your experience-possibility-story’s abstract-facts are really, in principle, different from all the other abstract facts.
In an earlier post, some time ago, I gave a few other reasons for saying that.
But that’s another issue, maybe controversial, and is separate from my main metaphysical proposal.)
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How could something completely hypothetical seem so non-conditionally factual?:
That’s the main objection to my metaphysical proposal.
For one thing, as a character, even if the primary character, the protagonist, of your experience-possibility-story, of course it’s apparently factual to you. It’s a story about your experience. You perceive the experience, not the fact that it’s a hypothetical story. What else would you expect in an experience story?
Unfalisifable proposition? I remind you that the complex systems of inter-referring abstract facts that I’ve referred to are uncontroversially-inevitable. In contrast, for example, the Materialist explanation for your world posits a genuinely unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact.
But many people might still perceive a sticking-point regarding the relation and reconciling between the uncontroversially-inevitable logical system, and your perception of non-conditional physical facts. I’m guessing that’s what has been meant by the expressed-issue about “substantive” vs logical facts.
Unsurprisingly, animals are designed to perceive and identify (non-conditional) “facts” about their surroundings. If it’s raining and cold, an animal might stay in its burrow or house (depending on what kind of an animal it is).
It’s practical, pragmatic and evolutionarily-adaptive for that organism to take that rain and cold as a “fact”, for the purpose of, and in the context of, its decision-making.
There’d be no adaptive advantage for that animal to regard it otherwise.
As I said, we use indicative/declarative grammar because it’s useful, not because it’s philosophically-supported. Conditional grammar describes the uncontroversially-inevitble implication-facts (if-then facts).
Evolutionarily-adaptive behavioral pragmatism vs philosophical explanation—do you really perceive a conflict between them?
Surely you’re familiar with the fact that, in physics, closer examination has shown that things are very different, radically-different, from how they previously appeared.
That’s even in physics. Why should you expect less in metaphysics?
So, if an uncontroversial metaphysics free of assumptions and brute-facts suggests that things aren’t quite what they seem in ordinary life, as opposed to in metaphysical discussion, should that really be surprising, given the lessons from physics about the fallibility of initial impressions and intuition?
For that matter, an authority on quantum-mechanics said that QM lays to rest the notion of an objective physical “reality”.
(When I quoted that before, someone asked for the source of the quote, and I supplied it. Do I have to find it again each time?)
Michael Ossipoff
But of course. I have a similar custom.
Interesting approach. Perhaps I'm just unaccustomed to this practice, but it would seem to make a series of three or four replies most cumbersome.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
If there's anything in those posts that counts as "noncontroversial metaphysics", it's slipped by me again. Would you care to point out which of your statements is "noncontroversial"?
In particular, the claim "there's an uncontroversial metaphysics that implies reincarnation" seems highly controversial to me. I would contest it, if you would care to argue in support the claim here.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
What does it mean to say that a reason is "more fundamental and original" than an explanation in terms of physical causation?
I see no reason to suppose there is any such thing, and I expect on the basis of past experience that many others will agree with me.
In that regard it seems your view is controversial before it's even off the ground. For you affirm that this "fundamental and original" reason is supposed to "generate the implication" of reincarnation.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I interpret the phrase "in a life" variously depending on context.
In the context of your metaphysical speculations, I suppose you mean to suggest that something like a soul -- whatever it is that's said to be reincarnated -- is found now in one life, now in another. Perhaps from time to time as a hungry ghost, a lion, a deer, a washerwoman, a queen, and so on.
But I see no reason to suppose that there is such a thing. So in other contexts I interpret a phrase like "in a life" quite differently.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
As it's a philosophy forum, I suppose to begin with it's an open question, how biology and physics are to be integrated into our philosophical conversations.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
What is a metaphysics? What does it mean to say that "in a metaphysics... there are... systems of ... facts"?
Is such a metaphysics just a story that someone tells? Can't we always tell another sort of story, even an incompatible one?
When you say "in the metaphysics I propose, there are such and such facts...", do you mean to suggest that this is an apt characterization of the way things are, or merely that this is one possible way to depict the world? Is it the only way? Is it a noncontroversial way?
Moreover, it seems to me perhaps you've jumped ahead, by claiming that your metaphysical picture is necessary and noncontroversial, before you've even cleared up your terms:
What is a fact? Is there a noncontroversial definition of "fact"?
What is an implication-fact? What is an abstract implication-fact, and is there any other sort of implication-fact?
What is a "complex system of abstract implication-facts"? In what sense are the abstract implication-facts in a complex system "inter-referring"?
Do you define an "abstract implication-fact' as an "instance of one hypothetical proposition implying another"? Then it seems hypothetical propositions are the basis, or basic unit of the "complex systems" you describe.
How do you distinguish between one such "complex system" and the "infinitely many others" you indicate? Why not say there is only one infinitely complex system? Do you have something like the "possible worlds" of modal logicians in mind here?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Why "inevitable"? The fact that a system contains infinitely many subsystems does not entail that it contains every possible subsystem.
I suggest it's "inevitable" just because you have inserted this inevitability into your landscape, along with all the rest of the scenery.
What does it mean to say that a set of propositions and implications among propositions has "events and relations" that *are* the "events and relations of my life"?
So far as I can see, an event described is not the same as a description of that event. Surely it would be controversial to say so.
"It's raining (here, now)" may be called a proposition. That's not the same as the rain or the rain-event thus described.
What kind of propositions are we talking about here?
When does one hypothetical proposition imply another? For instance, "It's raining" doesn't imply that I'll take an umbrella on my walk, and "I'm hungry" doesn't imply that I'll eat before morning.
Can you give particular examples of the fine-grained propositions and implications you have in mind?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Do you mean to suggest: There's no reason to believe that my experience is anything other than one subset of an infinite system of hypothetical propositions with implicatory relations?
Here's one reason: It seems my experience is actual, not hypothetical. In fact it seems our experience is the very basis of our concepts of actuality and possibility, among other concepts.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
This concession seems to threaten the claim that your picture is noncontroversial.
In this context, the adverb "superflously" seems grossly tendentious.
By now it seems you've begun to speak as if your complex system of hypothetical propositions is a thing that "exists", even apart from and independently of any physical world. But this claim is extremely controversial.
It's one thing to sketch a model of hypotheses, another to claim that the system of hypotheses "exists" apart from and prior to the physical world. How would you support such a claim, if that's what you're suggesting?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I'd say even more emphatically, that experience is a good starting point for all philosophy.
It seems we reach rather different conclusions from this starting point.
Part 1 of 2:
Somehow I didn’t notice this reply, and thought that I’d made the last post to this thread. So that’s why this reply is a month late.
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If this reply is long, then please understand that it’s in reply to a long post. I reply to everything that calls for a reply. That means copying the other person’s text, and including it in addition to my text. …inevitably making my reply even longer than the post to which I’m replying.
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It surely does. Nowadays, where (as is usually the case) there are only 2 levels of quotes in my reply, I do as in this post: I put the whole thing in the system-provided quote, but I put quotation marks around my text, and italicize it and my name after it.
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Well, I’ve tried to avoid saying anything that would be disagreed-with. So my effort was to make all of the statements uncontroversial.
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…starting with my uncontroversial statement that inevitably there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.
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Perhaps you could specify a particular claim of mine that you disagree with. (You do so in the post that I’m now replying to, and I answer your objections.)
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Alright, of course it requires 1) telling why my metaphysics is uncontroversial; and 2) Telling how my metaphysics implies reincarnation.
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First, to clarify what I mean by “uncontroversial”. I don’t mean that the conclusion isn’t drastically contrary to popular belief or Materialism. I don’t mean that no one will express disagreement. I mean that no one will express disagreement and point out a mis-statement or unsupported conclusion.
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I hope it’s alright if this isn’t very brief.
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1. Why my metaphysics is uncontroversial:
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It’s based on the uncontroversial fact that there are abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can mention them or refer to them. I make no other claim regarding their reality or existence.
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From that follows the conclusion that there are infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with all the mutually-consistent configurations of the hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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Uncontroversially-inevitably, among that infinity of complex logical systems, there’s one about your experience of physical events and physical and logical relations, and the physical world that is the setting of your experience.
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That’s all I claim. How controversial is that?
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I don’t deny that your experience and the physical world might, superfluously, unverifiably and unfalsifiably be additionally more than that. …with some unspecified sort of reality or existence that the above-described logical system doesn’t have.
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In other words, for example, I don’t deny that the Materialist’s world, more real or existent in some unspecified way, might “exist”, whatever that would mean, as a brute-fact, alongside the above-described logical system, and duplicating its events and relations.
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What part of that is controversial?
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2. Why it implies reincarnation:
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First, due to Materialism’s avoidable brute-fact, let’s disregard Materialist dogma, and not use it as an argument.
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When I say that my metaphysics implies reincarnation, I don’t mean “imply” with its formal logical meaning. I mean it in its more informal usual conversational meaning of “suggest”. I say that reincarnation follows from my metaphysics, but I don’t mean “provably”. I don’t claim proof of reincarnation.
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First, just speaking generally: If there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if that reason continues to obtain at the end of this life, then what does that suggest? It suggests that the same reason will have the same result, and that you’ll again be in a life.
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As I said, among that infinity of complex hypothetical logical systems, there timelessly is one that is the same as your experience of physical and logical matters. It’s about your physical-world experience, and it’s for you. I call it your “hypothetical experience-story”. That’s why you’re in a life. You, the protagonist of that story, are central and primary to it, though you and your physical surroundings are mutually complementary in that hypothetical story.
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Of course without you there wouldn’t be that experience-story. To use a term that Schope quoted from Schopenhauer, your Will to Life is the essential and central causative element to that hypothetical experience-story.
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At death, of course there’s eventually unconsciousness, by which I only mean absence of waking-consciousness and absence of knowledge and memory about this life. In the earlier stages of that unconsciousness there remains your subconscious Will to Life, and your own personal subconscious inclinations and predispositions.
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As I said, you’re unconscious in the sense that there’s no waking-consciousness or knowledge or memory about the recent life. In particular, you have no knowledge that a life has ended. You have no way of knowing, and of course aren’t even inclined to consider, whether you’re coming or going.
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In that setting, there remains the subconscious Will to Life, and subconscious inclinations and predispositions toward living.
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There’s inevitably a hypothetical experience-story about someone just like who you are at that time, but someone who is at the beginning of a life instead of at the end of one. Someone unconscious, but with subconscious Will to Life, and with the personal subconscious inclinations and predispositions that you have.
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At that time in your experience, you’re indistinguishable from that person. Your experience is that of that hypothetical protagonist in that hypothetical life-experience-story. It’s a continuation of experience rather than a transformation.
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If that sounds implausible, it’s no more remarkable or implausible than your being in this life in the first place.
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And, uncontroversially there is that other life-experience story, whose protagonist is you. …just as is the case for your experience of this life.
In various threads, I’ve discussed a much deeper unconsciousness, later in death, at which there are no inclinations, needs, wants, identity, individuality, worldly life, time, events, or even any knowledge or memory that there ever were or could be such things. But you won’t reach that stage. Not this time or anytime soon.
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As I said, I suggest these things, and I don’t claim proof. For one thing, I don’t remember personal experience of dying. And I admit that I don’t claim know enough of biology and psychology to guarantee the scenario that I’ve been speaking of. I merely say that it plausibly follows from my metaphysics.
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First, it means that I don’t believe that the physical world is fundamental or the origin of all. In other words, I don’t believe in Materialism. Materialism has a brute-fact (Its fundamentally-existent, metaphysically prior physical world). There’s a metaphysics (the one that I’ve described) that has no brute-fact and needs no assumptions.
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If Materialism were true, it would refute all that I’m saying here on the subject of reincarnation, but, due to its brute-fact nature, I’m disregarding Materialism in this reincarnation discussion. What I say about reincarnation assumes that Materialism isn’t true, though I can’t prove that Materialism isn’t true.
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Yes, you’re here because your parents got together. No one denies it. Idealists don’t deny it. In particular, I, an Idealist, don’t deny it.
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Physical law isn’t contravened in the physical world. There’s a physical explanation, in terms of other physical things, for every physical thing that happens, including your birth. I and other Idealists don’t deny that.
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…any such thing as something "more fundamental and original" than an explanation in terms of physical causation?
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You have no reason to believe that the physical world isn’t fundamental, metaphysically-prior to all, and the origin of all. Of course you don’t. I can’t prove that it isn’t. I don’t claim that there isn’t that brute-fact. I’ve said that many times.
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I can’t prove that the fundamentally-existent physical world that you believe in doesn’t exist as a brute-fact, as I explained earlier. It’s impossible to disprove an unfalsifiable proposition.
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So I’m not saying that you’re wrong, or that your brute-fact isn’t true. I’m saying only that it’s a brute-fact.
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If you believe in a brute-fact…well, suit yourself.
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I didn’t mean that my conclusions aren’t drastically different from popular belief.
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I fully admit that the conclusions I’ve been speaking of are drastically contrary to popular belief.
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I clarified above that I’m not saying that Materialists won’t disagree. I merely mean that they won’t disagree and specify a mis-statement or un-supported conclusion to justify their disagreement.
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See above.
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No. I have no idea where you get that. I’ve never mentioned a soul.
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No. What? Found by whom?
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When you speak of a soul, you’re using Biblical Literalist or Fundamentalist religious terminology. Fine, but don’t attribute it to me.
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You’re asking what is reincarnated, but all I said was that there’s continuity of experience from one life to another. In that sense, it’s (sequentially, in your experience) you in both lives, though there’s no memory of a previous life. I didn’t apply a name to what you are. You can if you want to.
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I’m not a Buddhist, so I wouldn’t know about that. It hadn’t occurred to me, and I don’t know how I’d justify it metaphysically. But I’m not saying that there couldn’t be some justification.
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You’re speculating. My speculation would be that reincarnation would be to a next life that is at least somewhat like the previous one, because one’s predispositions and inclinations are presumably not so different from what they were before, and, to the extent that they relate to a world, or kind of world, it’s reasonably to a world of the approximate kind that you lived in before.
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So the incarnation would, at least usually, be to the same (or a very similar) species, in a world that is at least in some ways similar to the previous one. That’s just my speculation.
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Go for it. But don’t count on being royalty. You weren’t this time, after all.
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See above. But suit yourself of course.
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“Metaphysics” has lots of definitions, some of them mutually-contradictory. Metaphysics is often taken as a broad term that encompasses ontology.
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I use “metaphysics” to refer to a description of what describably is. …about what is, and is describable and explainable.
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Should I call it “ontology”? Maybe, but ontology is often included in metaphysics.
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Others use “metaphysics” more broadly, to include what might not be explainable or describable. But, to clarify about that, I now speak of “describable metaphysics”.
To be continued...
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Part 2 of 2:
So, as I use the term, “a metaphysics” it refers to an account of what describably is.
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Are you sure that all of that was in one sentence said by me?
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I said, above in this reply, that there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can refer to them, and that there consequently are infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications”.
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If you ask what that means, then I invite you to specify a particular word, phrase or term that I used, that you don’t know the meaning of.
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No. Did I say it was? As I use the term, “a metaphysics” is an account of what describably is.
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Of course. You can tell any story you want to. You can even believe in and advocate a metaphysics based on a brute-fact. I can’t prove that your brute-fact isn’t true, if it isn’t inconsistent with observation, because it’s impossible to disprove an unfalsifiable proposition.
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That doesn’t sound like my wording, saying that the facts are in my metaphysics. I say that there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can refer to them.
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We don’t put things in quotes unless we’re making a direct quotation of one specific sentence that was actually said.
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Yes. It’s an apt characterization of how describable things are.
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No. There are all sorts of metaphysicses based on brute-facts and depending on assumptions. …Materialism, for example.
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My proposal differs by not depending on any assumptions or brute-facts.
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When I propose a metaphysics, I propose the logical systems that I’ve referred to. …without our physical world being other than that.
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However, I don’t claim that our physical world isn’t more than that, in some (usually unspecified) brute-fact way. Obviously it wouldn’t be possible to prove such a claim. …to disprove an unfalsifiable proposition.
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My limited claims are uncontroversial as I defined that term above.
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A fact is usually defined as a state of affairs, or as a relation among things. The implications that I speak of are facts by those definitions.
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But, as I say it now, I avoid that definitional issue by speaking instead of “abstract implications”, and clarify that, by “an implication”, I mean an implying of one proposition by another proposition.
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It’s a fact that is an implication, as I defined “implication” above. But (as I said) I now just say “implication”, and define it as an implying of one proposition by another proposition, to avoid issues about definitions of “fact”.
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I use “abstract implication” to refer to an implication about hypothetical things that needn’t have any particular “reality” or “existence” status.
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“If there’s a car parked in front of your house, then that car was built by someone and parked or placed in front or your house by someone.”
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…where that car is actually observed there by the speaker and the person spoken to, and isn’t hypothetical (You could say it’s hypothetical if we haven’t looked out the window yet—but the implication in quotes above is say-able even if we have looked out the window and know that there’s a car parked in front).
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Of course yes, the use of “if “ can be argued to make every implication “hypothetical”. …except in the example above, if we’re looking out the window and the car is in front of us as we speak.
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It’s a system of implications that is complex.
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I speak of a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications. …inter-referring in the sense that there are instances in which one or more implication is/are about one or more propositions or things that one or more other of the implications is/are about. …or in which one or more of the propositions is/are about things that one or more other propositions is/are about.
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See directly above.
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Yes. But now I just call it an “abstract implication”. …by which I mean an implying of one hypothetical proposition by another hypothetical proposition.
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\Yes. …and implications about them.
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They consist of different abstract implications, about different propositions, about different things, with different consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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Because not all abstract implications are inter-referring, as I defined that term above.
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That’s the sense in which they aren’t all in the same inter-referring system.
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These separate, different, hypothetical logical systems are entirely isolated and independent of eachother, and each is independent of any outside context…any context other than its own inter-referring context.
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I was referring specifically to the infinity of systems of abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things. Tautologically it includes all such systems.
I wasn't referring to just any infinite set of abstract propositions.
Every possible system of inter-referring abstract implications is one of the infinitely-many systems of inter-referring abstract implications.
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Maybe you’re questioning whether a system of inter-referring abstracts implications can match the physical events and relations of your experience in this physical world.
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I’ve mentioned that a set of hypothetical physical quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a physical law, theory or hypothesis) together constitute the antecedent of an implication. …except that one of those hypothetical physical-quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that implication.
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I’ve mentioned that a true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent consists, at least in part, of a set of mathematical axioms.
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It isn’t controversial to say that a physical system of things and events is modeled by a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications.
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Michael Faraday, in1844, pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that our physical world is other than a complex mathematical and logical relational structure. More recently Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark have said the same thing.
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There are those mathematical and logical relations, with or without objectively-existent “stuff” (whatever “objectively-existent” would mean).
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My metaphysical proposal differs mostly in being about a subjective experience-story rather than an objective world-story.
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See above.
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Yes, it’s not easy to word. Familiar topics are easier to word.
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I mean that that logical system models your physical experience in your physical world, in the sense that, if the hypothetical things, propositions and implications of that system are suitably-named, then a description of that system would be indistinguishable from an account of your experience.
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Yes, I know you don’t ordinarily experience all the things of physics. But you experience them when you more closely investigate and examine the physical world, or when you’re told of them by physicists, who find out about them when they more closely examine matter and its interactions.
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That’s one reason why I don’t just call it a mathematical system (like MUH).
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Because of my subjective emphasis, and because the only requirement of a subjective experience-story is consistency, I call it, more broadly, a logical system.
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Then I ask what you think this physical world additionally is, if you think it’s more than the hypothetical setting of such a hypothetical story.
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And I ask you in what context you want or believe this physical world to be or exist in, other than its own context.
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And I point out that whatever additional “objective reality” or “existence” you attribute to this physical world is an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact.
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Kiss Materialism goodbye unless you insist on believing in a brute-fact.
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There’s a logical system such that, with suitable naming of its things, a description of that logical system and its hypothetical things is the same as a description of your physical experience in your physical world.
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As you know, I’m speaking not only of hypothetical propositions, but also of implications about those propositions, and hypothetical things that the propositions are about, and a mutually-consistent configuration of hypothetical truth-values for the propositions.
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If it’s raining where you are, then, in the hypothetical experience-story that is your physical experience, with suitable naming of its things, it can be said that, in that experience-story, raindrops are now falling where you are.
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There’s an experience-story whose description matches a description of your experience.
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See above, where I discussed hypothetical quantity-values and a hypothetical relation among them. It is a proposition that a particular physical quantity-value has a certain value. It is a proposition that a certain hypothetical relation among the physical quantity-values obtains.
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But it isn’t just physical/mathematical matters. If you drop a heavy stone on your toe, it will at least hurt. No mathematics there. It’s a proposition that you drop the stone on your toe. It’s a proposition that it will at least hurt. One implies the other, unless you’re wearing boots with steel-reinforced toes.
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Closer examination of the situation, including some experiments, will result in directly experiencing relations among physical quantities.
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But, as I said, your experience isn’t entirely of physics and mathematics:
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As I often say, to say that there’s a traffic-roundabout at 34th & Vine is to say that if you go to 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter a traffic roundabout.
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But sometimes, via an experiment or observation, you experience the operation of a physical law. Sometimes you experience physical laws via reading about what physicists have found in their investigations and close examination of matter.
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When the truth of one would mean that the other is true.
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In the physical example that I spoke of, I was speaking of an implication in which a certain hypothetical set of physical quantity-values, and a certain hypothetical relation among physical quantities, implies a certain value for another physical quantity-value.
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For a non-mathematical example: If I observe a traffic-roundabout at 34th & Vine, then I can tell you that “you go to 34th I Vine” implies “You encounter a traffic-roundabout”.
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Of course.
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I gave the general example of some hypothetical quantity values, and a hypothetical relation among them; and the general example of a true mathematical theorem; and two non-mathematical examples.
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Is that an answer to your question?
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Yes. Of course at any time, your experience is only one place in your overall life-experience-story. …which is one of infinitely-many (mutually unrelated, unconnected, isolated and independent) complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with their various mutually-consistent configurations of truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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What do you mean by “actual”?
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One consensus-meaning of “actual” that I’ve found is: “Part of or consisting of this physical world”. By that definition, whatever is or happens in this physical world is “actual”, even it it’s all only hypothetical.
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Of course.
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That’s why I say that the experiencer, the protagonist is complementary with his/her physical world, but primary and metaphysically prior to it in a meaningful sense.
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…and complementary with logic itself, for that matter, now that you bring that up--if you say that there are no abstract implications without someone to speak of them.
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On contrary, limiting my claim protects it from controversial-ness, by disclaiming something that could be controversial.
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Not only can I not prove what I said that I can’t prove, but I don’t claim it either.
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No, it seems reasonable to use that word for something that is “an unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the [uncontroversially-inevitable] hypothetical logical system that I described above.”
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…except that I’ve specified many times that I make no claims for its existence or reality.
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My only claim about these hypothetical systems’ “existence” is that there are abstract implications (and therefore systems of them) in the sense that we can speak of or refer to them.
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I make no other claim about their existence or reality.
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If you think that this physical world has “existence” “objective existence”, or “reality” that isn’t had by the logical system that I speak of, then what do you mean by “existence”, “objective existence”, or “reality”?
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In what context do you believe or want for this physical universe to “exist”, other than its own context?
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…and, if you have an answer to the above questions, or to one of them, are you sure that you aren’t positing a brute-fact?
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Yes, the complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with all the mutually-consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions—to which I refer—is indeed hypothetical.
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However, that there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them isn’t a “hypothesis”. It’s uncontroversially-inevitable.
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See above. I don’t make any claims for its existence or reality, other than saying that there are abstract implications (and therefore systems of them) in the sense that we can speak of or refer to them.
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As for this physical world of your experience being something else, or something more, than such a hypothetical system—If you claim that, then I ask you in what way you think that this physical world is more than that. ...and be sure to define your terms.
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And after you answer that, I’ll ask you why there is whatever it is that you believe in. Brute-fact?
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I’ll take your word for that, because you haven’t mentioned a metaphysical/ontological proposal that you claim is more parsimonious or supportable than mine, because you don’t know of one.
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There are other Subjective Idealists and Subjective Idealisms.
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I add mention of the premise that there are abstract implications (and therefore systems of them) in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.
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Thereby, I talk about a completely parsimonious metaphysical “mechanism” and explanation for what describably is.
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There have been and are other Ontic Structuralists. The (Western, at least) ones I’ve heard of are Ontic Structural Realists (…but I haven’t heard enough about Michael Faraday to say that for sure).
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But I speak of subjective experience-stories, rather than objective world-stories.
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I don’t claim that all experience is logical, or that experience is entirely of logic, mathematics or physics.
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But a notable characteristic of our experience of this physical world’s physical things and events is that our experience of that isn’t inconsistent. Consistency seems be a requirement for that kind of experience.
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Arguably it would be impossible to really prove that a physical world is inconsistent, because a seeming inconsistency might merely be due to as-yet undiscovered physics (as has often been the case in the past), or mistaken memory, or hallucination, or dream.
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I agree with Litewave, that it would be meaningless to speak of an inconsistent physical universe, because there are no such things as mutually-inconsistent facts.
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But, in physics, there’s been a clear tendency for seeming inconstancies to later be explained by new physics that makes those seemingly mutually-inconsistent observations all consistent with the new physics.
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Most likely physics will be an open-ended endless sequences of explanations of physical things and laws by subsequently-discovered other physical things and laws. …and a never-ending revision of those laws.
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…unless maybe that endeavor eventually comes up against a final barrier due (for example) to high energies or small sizes that are infeasible for examination, or are inaccessible in principle.
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Michael Ossipoff
I’m posting this as a reply to Cabbage Farmer, not because there’s any longer a reason to try to communicate with him, but only because, as a matter of form and propriety, he should be notified of this reply to something that he asked that I hadn’t yet answered. Otherwise it could be suggested that I’m posting furtively,
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But this post isn’t to Cabbage Farmer. It’s to anyone else who notices this thread.
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Then why am I posting this answer (below in this posting)? Because, unlike some people, I answer questions that are asked of me.
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Of course the “conversation” with Cabbage Farmer ended as these conversations always do: …with Cabbage Farmer being asked what he means by some of his words, and not answering. …because he doesn’t know what he means.
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I posted this as a reply to Cabbage Farmer as a matter of form and propriety, because I don’t want to seem to be posting furtively, trying to evade possible criticism or refutation of what I say.
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Here’s Cabbage Farmer’s question that I didn’t answer:
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I didn’t answer because I’d already said what I meant, and answered questions about what I meant, and invited specific questions about particular sentences, terms, words or statements that Cabbage Farmer might not understand the meaning of—and questions about the justification of conclusions.
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…and because it seems best to let modal logicians speak for themselves about their positions.
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But I’ll say that, regarding the relation of our “actual” physical universe to the other hypothetical physical universes, David Lewis’s “Modal Realism” says much of what I say.
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Before I paste some of what I found about it, I’ll just say that one difference is that I speak of a subjective experience-story instead of an objective world-story.
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Here’s some of what I found:
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Michael Ossipoff
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
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Aside from the fact that I didn't say that it "exists" (whatever that would mean), let me comment on the following:
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What? Some of the complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications are no different in kind for what I suggested that our physical world is. (I asked you in what way you think this physical world is different from or more than that--a question that objectors never seem to be able to answer.)
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Is it that Cabbage Farmer feels that a physical world needs observers/experiencers? No problem:
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In the hypothetical experience-stories that I speak of, the experiencer and the physical world of hir (his/her) experience are complementary to eachother. ...mutually-complementary parts of the same system.
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The physical worlds aren't independent of an experiencer. The physical worlds are only the complementary setting for the experiencer's experience in the hypothetical experience-story.
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Here, quoted from a Wikipedia article about David Lewis’s Modal Realism, is a good assessment of people’s problem with Modal Realism (…and what the objections to my metaphysics always really come down to):
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Yes, but intuition isn’t always helpful in philosophy.
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Yes, that basically what the objections to my proposal come down to. But of course people try to portray their objections as arguments. …but always turn out to not know what they mean by the terms used in their objections.
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Michael Ossipoff
I'd like to emphasize that I'm not saying that David Lewis speaks for me.
I just wanted to mention that he said some things that I say, but I also mentioned some differences, and found more at SEP.
Michael Ossipoff