Absolute truth
After millennia of philosophy it seems we have only arrived at one absolute truth:
Something exists.
We know the usual arguments that lead to this conclusion, for instance even if there was a demon that would make us believe we exist while we don’t, if it makes us believe then that means we exist, or at the very least that the demon exists, so something necessarily exists.
Are we doomed to never advance any further than that? No because there is a second absolute truth we can arrive at, it is much harder to see, but many people in history have had a glimpse of it. It takes enormous effort to see it, but once we see it the problem is then to find a way to show it to others so that they can see it too, as it is not easy to arrive at. But recently I’ve had a breakthrough and now I believe I should be able to show it to you with your help. By this I mean that I am going to advance an argument supporting this second absolute truth, that argument probably won’t be foolproof at first, but with your objections we will find a way to patch the holes and make it foolproof, thus proving a second absolute truth.
Recently you may have seen me tinkering with the ideas of good and evil, existence and non-existence, unity and separation, love and hate, happiness and suffering. At some point I thought that everything could be explained if we saw everything as the struggle between Good and Evil, but then I thought that it could also be possible that everything that happens occurs in the mind of a single consciousness, that the whole reality is a game played out in the mind of a fundamental consciousness, a game with rules in which one side fights to spread love/happiness/unity/understanding while one side fights to spread hate/suffering/separation/ignorance.
However I came to realize that if all of existence was played out inside a single mind, how could a mind imagine feelings that it has never experienced before? How could a mind imagine happiness and suffering out of nothing? In order for there to be things that can be distinguished, the fundamental mind itself cannot be made of a single thing, it needs to have at least a duality within it. Or if it is made of a single thing that has the ability to create different things, then when it creates other things there is more than one thing that exists.
Now consider the universe that we see. We come up with theories to explain how it behaves. In fundamental physics there are forces that attract and other forces that repel. It is a necessity that there be both attractive and repulsive forces, a unified theory of physics will not be able to describe the universe in terms of only one attractive force or one repulsive force. Because if there were only an attractive force, everything would quickly collapse into nothingness, our body would collapse onto itself along with all matter. And if there were only a repulsive force, there would be no body, no planet, the fundamental particles would all be separated from one another, and that’s not the universe we have (and if there are several particles then more than one thing exists anyway). So a unified theory of physics will necessarily have at least a fundamental duality at its core. Not complete unity, but a duality.
So the second absolute truth is that there cannot be only a single thing that exists in this reality now, there is at least a fundamental duality, there are at least two things that exist. I know I haven’t formalized the argument yet but this is to show you the way. I would love to hear your objections so that we can address them and conclude that this is the second absolute truth, that at least two things exist. I know what these two things are but I haven’t found a way yet to show them to you, but for now simply proving that at least two things exist, that there is a fundamental duality, will already be a big step forward.
Something exists.
We know the usual arguments that lead to this conclusion, for instance even if there was a demon that would make us believe we exist while we don’t, if it makes us believe then that means we exist, or at the very least that the demon exists, so something necessarily exists.
Are we doomed to never advance any further than that? No because there is a second absolute truth we can arrive at, it is much harder to see, but many people in history have had a glimpse of it. It takes enormous effort to see it, but once we see it the problem is then to find a way to show it to others so that they can see it too, as it is not easy to arrive at. But recently I’ve had a breakthrough and now I believe I should be able to show it to you with your help. By this I mean that I am going to advance an argument supporting this second absolute truth, that argument probably won’t be foolproof at first, but with your objections we will find a way to patch the holes and make it foolproof, thus proving a second absolute truth.
Recently you may have seen me tinkering with the ideas of good and evil, existence and non-existence, unity and separation, love and hate, happiness and suffering. At some point I thought that everything could be explained if we saw everything as the struggle between Good and Evil, but then I thought that it could also be possible that everything that happens occurs in the mind of a single consciousness, that the whole reality is a game played out in the mind of a fundamental consciousness, a game with rules in which one side fights to spread love/happiness/unity/understanding while one side fights to spread hate/suffering/separation/ignorance.
However I came to realize that if all of existence was played out inside a single mind, how could a mind imagine feelings that it has never experienced before? How could a mind imagine happiness and suffering out of nothing? In order for there to be things that can be distinguished, the fundamental mind itself cannot be made of a single thing, it needs to have at least a duality within it. Or if it is made of a single thing that has the ability to create different things, then when it creates other things there is more than one thing that exists.
Now consider the universe that we see. We come up with theories to explain how it behaves. In fundamental physics there are forces that attract and other forces that repel. It is a necessity that there be both attractive and repulsive forces, a unified theory of physics will not be able to describe the universe in terms of only one attractive force or one repulsive force. Because if there were only an attractive force, everything would quickly collapse into nothingness, our body would collapse onto itself along with all matter. And if there were only a repulsive force, there would be no body, no planet, the fundamental particles would all be separated from one another, and that’s not the universe we have (and if there are several particles then more than one thing exists anyway). So a unified theory of physics will necessarily have at least a fundamental duality at its core. Not complete unity, but a duality.
So the second absolute truth is that there cannot be only a single thing that exists in this reality now, there is at least a fundamental duality, there are at least two things that exist. I know I haven’t formalized the argument yet but this is to show you the way. I would love to hear your objections so that we can address them and conclude that this is the second absolute truth, that at least two things exist. I know what these two things are but I haven’t found a way yet to show them to you, but for now simply proving that at least two things exist, that there is a fundamental duality, will already be a big step forward.
Comments (110)
Absolute truth does not exist. If you are looking for absolute truth I would suggest you join a religion. There are plenty of them.
So “something exists” is not an absolute truth? What is it then? Show me your reasoning where you conclude that it’s possible that nothing exists. What are you doing on this forum if it doesn’t exist or if you don’t even exist, or if you’re not even a brain in a vat? Even if you’re a solipsist don’t you see something?
When I say absolute truth I don’t mean it will always remain an absolute truth (it’s possible that at some point in the future nothing exists anymore), but for now it is and it can’t be any other way.
Also when you say “absolute truth does not exist”, is that an absolute truth? If not what is it? Your personal truth? And that personal truth exists or not? Is it an illusion? If it’s an illusion what is creating the illusion? Something, right? :brow:
Let's see. The "truth" of anything resides in a statement or at least a cognition "about" something, right? So for there to be truth of any kind, there must bare minimum be something about which the truth is true. That would be a Kantian Transcendental Argument.
Now, what is the difference between "truth" and "absolute truth"? Well, nothing really. I think that the sense in which @leo is using the term "absolute" is, most basic or fundamental, or general. A truth that is applicable to the most broad set of referents. If A is true, and B is true, and C is true, then there must be some common aspect of A and B and C such that you can say (A,B,C) which is the intersection the A,B, and C, is true. Quarks exist. Mathematics exists. Thought exists. So there must be something common to them all, maybe "Reality" of which it is "universally true" to say "Reality exists". Kind of a tautology. Or is it a synthetic a priori? Either way, I'd go along with this general line of reasoning.
Okay I grant you that: To have this discussion, something has to exist. That is an absolute truth. Not that this truth is in any way enlightening and does not require any philosophical insight, just everyday 'common sense'.
Furthermore we can state: Everything is either an hallucination, as in the Matrix or there is indeed a tangible reality outside of our consciousness. And I don't think we will ever solve that little conundrum.
Let it go.
"Okay I grant you that: To have this discussion, something has to exist. That is an absolute truth. Not that this truth is in any way enlightening and does not require any philosophical insight, just everyday 'common sense'."
So Descartes is sitting in the bar and the bartender asks him if he wants another drink. Descartes says, "I think not." and disappears.
Quoting leo
I haven't followed your writing here, so the following may be a misapprehension: your view of philosophy may be hermetic: thinking that is closed off from the flow of validating (or invalidating) experience, and cut off from the range of thought. People think about this world where "a lot of stuff exists" using various techniques -- science, literature, art, philosophy, labor, religion, and so on. If there are truths to be discovered, a wideness in our methods will yield better results.
The point of this thread is to show that we can prove something more than “something exists”, namely that “at least two things exist”. It might seem insignificant but this is a very important observation. There is currently a fundamental duality at the heart of existence, it cannot all be reduced to one single thing.
You were believing that there is no absolute truth, now you agree there is one, and I’m saying we can prove a second one. It is a step towards understanding existence, it is a useful stepping stone. Eventually we will find more.
2 + 2 = 4 isn’t always true, if you mix 2 ml of liquid A with 2 ml of liquid B, the volume of the resulting liquid is not always 4 ml. You can build mathematical frameworks in which 2 + 2 is not equal to 4. So the truth of that statement is limited, whereas “something exists” is true regardless.
“I see the color red” may be true or not. Even if it is true to me, you cannot know for sure whether I’m lying or not, you cannot know for sure what I am experiencing, you can only guess. However if you are a being who has experiences, “something exists” is necessarily true for you as well, and even if you are only in my mind “something exists” is still true.
There are plenty of personal truths that contradict one another, I would call personal truth a belief. Absolute truth goes beyond that, it is true regardless of what we assume. Whatever you assume about the world, about existence, you can be certain that something exists, and further than that you can be certain that at least two things exist. Whereas if you assume that other people only exist when you see them, then it isn’t true to you that other people exist even when you don’t see them. However regardless of what you assume, you can be certain that at least two things exist. That’s important.
Regarding your other remarks, my thinking isn’t removed from experiences, sure I see plenty of stuff, however as we have seen from physics what we interpret as different things can be explained as being fundamentally made of the same thing, for instance all objects we see can be described as being made of a few fundamental particles, there are many less fundamental particles than there are objects or even colors that can be distinguished. There is the idea that we could go even further than that and see all these different particles as being deep down the same thing (a vibrating string). Some people have the idea that deep down there is only one single thing, say a single God, or a single consciousness, or a single particle, or a single force. However what I am explaining here is that necessarily, there has to be at least two things at the root of our existence.
People keep disagreeing about pretty much everything and yet somehow you guys don’t find it important to find things we can agree on. Earlier someone disagreed that it is true that “something exists”, now he agrees. Now maybe some people will disagree that “at least two things exist”, but I’m saying that we can all come to agree on that because whatever we assume leads to this conclusion. Even if you assume that “only one thing exists” you are led to a contradiction and so you conclude that “at least two things must exist”. This is more important than you guys seem to realize.
Again I agree with you there. I too am a believer in the duality of things. To have matter, anti-matter must also exist. For something to arise from nothing, anti-something also has to come into existence.
Quoting leo
True. If 2 half-assed philosophers meet 2 other half-assed philosophers for lunch, their discussions might not add up to anything. 2 + 2 in that case may equal less than zero. I'm not suggesting that you are one of the 4.
Quoting leo
A forum such as this one brings out the urge to distinguish differences, even if they are minute. In the decade that I've participated in this and the previous incarnation of Philosophy Forum, people have agreed on a good many things. But we are all here to express ourselves, and "I agree with you." just isn't as much of an opening as "Let me explain the facts of life to you."
In any case, carry on with enthusiasm.
I believe in the existence of many things. The many are made up of a few particles combined in particular ways. Without the plethora of things made from a dearth of different particles, we would not exist. Is this a truth? Seems like it to me, but you don't have to accept it.
Why the snarky remarks? What is it exactly you don’t like about what I am saying? There is something that bothers you and instead of addressing it directly you’re beating around the bush.
I gave you an example where 2+2=4 doesn’t always hold (adding liquids). In mathematics you can create a group in which 2+2=4 doesn’t hold, see https://www.quora.com/Is-2-plus-2-always-4
2+2=4 isn’t always true depending on what you assume, however “something exists” and “at least two things exist” are true regardless of what we assume, that’s important. That’s not half-assed philosophy.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Great, yes some people agree on some things, yet through philosophy we see that we can almost always find a way to doubt some statement, to prove that it may not be true.
Now what I’m saying, and which you don’t seem to want to admit, is that “something exists” and “at least two things exist” are facts of life that are true now regardless of what we assume, we can’t doubt these statements without arriving at a contradiction. These statements have universal validity now, they may not hold in the future but now they do.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, and many people do, however someone can come and tell you “maybe the whole of reality happens in the imagination of a single consciousness, or maybe only you exists, or maybe eventually a theory of everything will prove that only one thing exists”, however as I explained it is possible to prove that at least two things exist, even if we assume solipsism or that there is only one consciousness or whatever.
Quoting Bitter Crank
If we assume that the material world is part of consciousness rather than the other way around then we don’t have to see ourselves as being made of particles. If we assume that materialism is correct, then there are many things, but we don’t know that materialism is true (personally I do not believe in it), however regardless of our philosophical assumptions, materialism idealism solipsism or whatever, “at least two things exist” is true now.
I might be willing to take "something exists" or "at least two things exist" as a starting point. Moving on, we have come to understand that many things exist. So I am not willing to entertain that idea as an account of reality.
Quoting leo
Quite a few 'someones' over the last decade have come forward to announce that solipsism or a single consciousness accounts for everything. These claims are then dismantled by various other 'someones'.
I suppose one could claim that the universe, and the fullness thereof, resides in the single consciousness of God. If so, God seems to have thought a very complex reality made up of many parts. The problem with this theory is that we do not have the means to parse the consciousness of God, if God exists in the first place. Still, the universe as the dream of God has a certain aesthetic appeal and weightiness.
Okay thank you.
By the way to say that “at least two things exist” is not to say that “only two things exist”, and so is not to say that “many things exist” is false. A lot of existence can be understood as a duality, but it doesn’t imply that the duality is all there is. For instance there can be many beings on each side of the duality.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Indeed that’s one possibility, and one I ascribed to for a little while, however one wonders why would this single consciousness dream or imagine so much suffering if it could imagine anything. In another thread I hypothesized that it would dream suffering because it is eternally alone and suffers from this loneliness which it tries to forget, however loneliness doesn’t necessarily imply suffering, loving oneself makes one feel not alone. So if all there was is this single consciousness, we are left wondering whence suffering?
And even if we say that only this single consciousness exists, as soon as it dreams something there are at least two things that exist, the consciousness and what it dreams. And even if we identify that consciousness with what it dreams, as long as we can distinguish things within this dream then at least two things exist. Whatever assumption we start from always leads to the conclusion that at least two things exist. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has reached this result but I never heard it before.
Descartes gave the Cogito ergo sum (“I think therefore I exist”), which was criticized because his reasoning only proves that “something exists” (or “thinking exists”), however we can go further than that and say that “at least two things exist”. That’s something we can use as a secure foundation for knowledge, rather than the mere “something exists”.
And when we consider that there is a fundamental duality at the heart of this existence we can come to explain a lot of things that otherwise don’t seem to make sense. But of course we don’t have to assume a fundamental duality (we could assume a trinity or a multiplicity), and even if we assume a duality this doesn’t imply that only two things exist (we can see many things existing on each side of the duality).
However it is interesting to notice the duality between attraction and repulsion, unity and division, connection and separation, understanding and indifference, love and hate, we can explain so much by seeing existence as a struggle between two forces, one which acts to unite/attract/connect and one which acts to divide/repel/separate. Especially when we notice that unity/attraction/connection is associated with positive feelings (love, beauty, happiness) whereas division/repulsion/separation is associated with negative feelings (hate, ugliness, suffering).
I believe that in this way we can come to a unified picture of existence, where emotions are not a mere byproduct of motion but are as fundamental, where emotion and motion are two facets of a more fundamental thing. I believe that only in this way we will come to a unified understanding of existence, and not by seeing emotion as a byproduct of motion, as stemming from laws of physics or motions of particles or brain states, as is customarily believed in the materialist picture which appears to lead into an impasse.
I think this second truth negates your first truth as contradictory to it. If there is a multiplicity of things existing then they exist in relations to each other, and these relations are changing, as the passing of time, and relativity theory, demonstrates to us. An existing "thing" therefore cannot be composed of parts, because the thing would be changing, always becoming something other than it is. The thing composed of parts does not "exist" because it is always something other than it is as time passes. So we must consider the particular "things" which make up the multiplicity, the elements which exist in relation to one another. Since they are all particulars, they cannot all be the same thing. Therefore we cannot refer to these as "something" which exists, they are things which exist, and we no longer have the first truth "something exists"..
For something to emerge from nothingness, it and it's exact opposite have to emerge simultaneously. This is the duality of things.
I don't think anything ever comes from nothing. Isn't that a fundamental truth?
Do you know anything about Quantum fluctuations in a vacuum? Google it.
If there are quantum fluctuations in a vacuum, then very clearly that vacuum is not "nothing".
Yes with your Metaphysician' mind you must know far more than the brightest scientists working on that problem as we speak.
What is that 'nothing' then? Give us your hypothesis.
As I said, it doesn't make sense to speak of that as nothing. And, it isn't bright scientists who speak of it as nothing, they speak in terms of fields, it's only you who wants to call this "nothing".
Yes empty fields. Zero-point field. You know what zero is right?
Whatever number the field is assigned, as a value for energy, is irrelevant to the fact that the field which is assigned that value, must be something.
To assign to a thing zero energy, and then argue that because it has no energy it is nothing, is self-contradicting, because it is already premised that there is the thing which has no energy, as the premise of the thing which is assigned zero energy.
Nothing has zero energy. So are we talking about nothing?
Thanks for the comment, at last someone is trying to challenge what I said without attacking me.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Note that when I say that “something exists” I’m not saying that “only one thing exists” but that “at least one thing exists”. So “at least two things exist” does not negate “at least one thing exists”, it is simply more precise, they are both true as long as we prove that at least two things exist.
Some thoughts on the rest of what you said:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There could be several things existing completely in isolation from one another, in which case there would be no relation between them. However I would agree that we couldn’t know of these things if they were completely isolated away, so regarding this existence I agree to think of existing things as being related in some way.
I wouldn’t appeal to the theory of relativity in the argument since it is based on several unproven assumptions, and here we are trying to find what we can be certain of regardless of what we assume. We can’t appeal to scientific theories which are based on induction which is unproven itself, so we’re left considering existence in the now.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It could be that a thing composed of parts remains unchanging as long as it is not influenced by another thing, and that when it is influenced only parts of the thing changes. So I don’t agree that a thing composed of parts necessarily always changes.
Some thoughts on what you said to ovdtogt:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It can be doubted, maybe existence came from nothing or maybe it was always there. From a limited point of view within existence we can’t say, and there is no point of view outside existence by definition. There is already something so we don’t see anything coming from nothing, even if something seems to come from nothing we can say that it came from something that exists but that we don’t see. But without seeing the whole of existence we don’t know, so it can’t be said to be a fundamental truth, it’s rather a working assumption.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with you here, quantum fluctuations or however we call them are clearly something.
And in reply to ovdtogt:
Quoting ovdtogt
There is positive and negative energy, so a system that exists can have zero energy as a whole, while parts of the system have positive energy and other parts have negative energy.
The zero-point field only has zero energy on average, on tiny scales it fluctuates between positive and negative energy.
What people call empty space isn’t empty, isn’t nothing, it is bathing in radiation coming from all the rest of the universe, wherever you are there is radiation coming from distant galaxies.
Exactly. That is how something can emerge from nothing. The penny has dropped.
But positive energy and negative energy are each not nothing. When they are exactly equal they aren’t nothing, it is only if both are zero that there is nothing.
For instance there is the hypothesis that the total energy of the universe is zero, in other words that there is as much negative energy in attractive forces as there is positive energy in repulsive forces, but clearly the universe isn’t nothing. When positive energy and negative energy are not zero, there isn’t nothing even when they are equal.
So even if we say that the universe emerged from quantum fluctuations that had zero energy as a whole, that doesn’t mean that it emerged from nothing, because these quantum fluctuations had both non-zero positive and negative energy. In the same way that this universe isn’t nothing even though it may have zero energy as a whole. It is wrong to say that zero total energy is nothing, because positive and negative energies are not nothing.
Quantum fluctuations aren’t nothing, otherwise we couldn’t detect them, they only appear to be nothing if we don’t look closely. Similarly we might say that there is nothing in an empty room, but really there isn’t nothing because there is air, there are molecules, which we can detect. And even if we remove all the molecules there is still something, which we can detect in other ways. The appearance of nothingness isn’t nothingness.
We can't imagine something coming from nothing because nothing in our 'real' world' does that.
It is a mathematical concept. 1 and -1 together are zero. Zero is nothing but 1 and -1 are something.
That is a misconception. It does not fluctuate between positive and negative Two particles (positive and negative) briefly come into being and disappear again.
"This allows the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation
1. Something exists; which leads us to also be certain that
2. Something is aware of existence.
They could potentially be the same thing - depending on what it means to ‘exist’.
How is that going to help me make my breakfast?
If fallibility is accepted as a possibility, then even "something exists" is not absolutely necessarily true, since one could just be failing to understand what those words even mean. You can never prove that you have evaluated your proofs correctly.
If fallibility is accepted then fallibility exists and that is something.
Don't misrepresent. I said:"if fallibility is accepted as a possibility". Therefore nothing is accepted as true or existing.
Something has to exist (for fallibility) to be accepted. Fallibility can not exist in a void.
Even if you fail to understand what the words mean, you can still see that something exists without expressing it in a language. There are thoughts, there are experiences, even if I don’t name them. You don’t need to evaluate a proof that there is something when experiencing is the immediate fact. Call it experience, call it thought, call it existence, call it however you want or call it nothing at all, it is still something.
If you reach the conclusion that nothing exists then how can you experience anything at all? If nothing exists how is it that you do something? You don’t have to accept the words I say as proof, you don’t even have to read words of think of words, you can see and understand without all that. But if you deny existence, as long as you do or experience anything you are contradicting your denial.
And indeed as ovdtogt says, accepting fallibility as a possibility is accepting something, it is doing something. But also failing to understand is failing to understand something, and evaluating a proof incorrectly is still doing something. You can’t deny existence without contradicting yourself constantly.
Even if you say that contradicting oneself is fine, contradicting oneself is still doing something. And so on and so forth.
Or one can simply be mistaken in that evaluation.
Something has to exist to be mistaken. Mistaken can not exist in a void.
For 'I think' an 'I' has to exist.
If one is mistaken then one exists, if an evaluation is made then that evaluation exists, if that evaluation is incorrect it is still an evaluation, if the evaluation of the evaluation is incorrect it is still an evaluation, if it is incorrect that it is an evaluation it is still something, ...
For something to be contemplated, something has to exist to do the contemplation. We just don't know what that 'thing' is and we will never find out because we can't step out of 'our' reality as we can't escape from 'our' 3 dimensional, 4 including time, prison.
Quoting leo
Okay, you clearly don't get the point of my argument. Your derivations are logically valid, but our evaluations that they are logically valid, including the evaluation of the derivation that even failed derivations need to exist to fail, can all be fallible. We might always be just talking words that don't represent any kind of truth and no one just realizing it.
I get you want to argue that absolutely nothing is known, or nothing is known for certainty?
The words still exist, if the words are an illusion there is still the illusion that there are words and the illusion is something, ...
What I have written here is my expression of what I can be certain of. That’s not to say the words are true. What those words mean for me is true. I could be using the words differently to how you might interpret them, sure. I’m certainly open to approaching a shared meaning using different words or even different forms of expression. But it still starts with an expression, and this is the one I offer in this discussion, FWIW. I’m fairly confident in its truth regardless of possible alternative meanings of each word, but I’m also happy to be proven wrong.
Quoting Qmeri
You find it very difficult to accept philosophically that you exist?
btw I don't think you are thinking about nothing since I do trust in logic, but I just don't think we can absolutely prove anything.
Quoting ovdtogt
I see you are avoiding my question.
No, I do accept it philosophically, since I do consider logical necessities the highest form of proof. I just don't think even showing something to be a logical necessity is absolute proof, since we could just have made a mistake. Making a mistake about something being a logical necessity happens quite often.
Only dogmatic religion is absolute. Philosophy is speculative religion and all we have is logic to guide us. Without logical (necessity) we are groping around in the dark without a candle.
Yes -1 + 1 = 0, but -1 * 1 = -1 for instance, why do you assume that a sum of energies equal to zero implies nothingness? That’s an arbitrary assumption. As I said it is possible that the total energy of the universe is constantly zero, yet you agree that the universe is not nothing, so clearly a sum of energies equal to zero does not imply nothingness.
In nothingness there is no such thing as energy, in nothingness energy isn’t equal to zero it doesn’t even exist. Something being equal to zero doesn’t imply that nothing exists. If I have 2 apples and you have 2 oranges, and I give you 2 apples and you give me 2 oranges, I now have 0 apple and you have 0 orange, does that mean that the apples and oranges have ceased to exist? No, the apples and oranges have moved, whereas their total number has remained constant. Same idea with energy, energy changes locally while its total number remains constant, we’ve defined that number to be 0 because it’s neat but we could have picked any number as long as we remain consistent in the calculations.
Quoting ovdtogt
See the first sentence in your link:
“a quantum fluctuation is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space”
A temporary change in energy, meaning that on small scales the energy doesn’t stay constantly at zero, and it doesn’t become only positive either, so it does fluctuate between positive and negative, it becomes positive in a tiny volume while it becomes negative in another tiny volume nearby, and that fluctuates, the same location is not always only positive or only negative.
Again, even if you evaluate everything incorrectly, there is still an evaluation occurring. If you think things that don’t represent anything, there are still things that are thought. However you twist it, there is something occurring.
Think of it this way: you are using logic against an argument where the whole point is that we can always fail at logic. Logical necessity of existence is a good logical necessity. But like with all logical conclusions - whether they are about a logical necessity or anything else - we could always just be mistaken. People make mistakes about logical necessities quite often.
Indeed, I would say that in the most general sense they are the same. Because for instance what would it mean to experience a color or have a thought without an awareness of it? In any experience there is some level of awareness by definition.
I thought that the truth of “something exists” was uncontroversial and that we would debate on the truth of “at least two things exist”, however it seems that some people already don’t agree that “something exists” is true, but that’s good, it shows that the truth of it isn’t that obvious to some and that’s why it’s important to help them see why it’s true.
But the particularity of “something exists” is that even if you believe you are mistaken about it, it still implies that “something exists” is true because in order for something to be mistaken something has to exist. It is important to see that not all truth is relative. Even if you don’t accept the argument, discussing with me or reading words is a proof that something exists.
If you don’t accept anything as a proof, then what do you accept? If you accept something, by definition something exists. If you don’t accept anything, how do you decide what to do?
One can surely keep saying “nothing exists” no matter what we say to them, yet by their very assertion they contradict themselves. They may not see it, but they’re still doing it. In another thread you explained clearly how fundamental contradictions are impossible, and I agreed, so if you have the ability to see contradictions you should have the ability to see that asserting “nothing exists” is a contradiction. Or you can simply keep repeating that we don’t know that but that won’t ever get us anywhere.
Now I presume that you do philosophy in order to reach some goals. These goals presuppose that something exists, and that there are things that can be known. You may keep disagreeing and keep saying that we cannot know, but deep down you know it’s true.
You seem to think there is something particular about "something exists" as a logical necessity since being mistaken about it is also a logical impossibility. Try the same thing with any logical necessity. They are all like that. "All bachelors are unmarried." Is that true in all possible worlds? Yes! Therefore it's a logical necessity. "Someone thinks that "all bachelors are unmarried" and is mistaken." Is that untrue in all possible worlds? Yes! Therefore it's a logical impossibility.
There is nothing special about "something exists" as a logical necessity. The logical impossibility of being mistaken about it is just so in your face that people get that intuition.
You can start with an assumption like this, but it is really necessary to clarify what you mean by "thing". We might remove the notion of "thing" altogether, and start with the assumption of existence. Then we say 'there is existence', and this is not to predicate existence of some thing, or something, it makes existence the thing, as the subject. In this way we remove, from the starting premise, the duality which necessarily follows, created when you see the necessity of a plurality of things. The essence of this duality is really derived from the need for a boundary which separates individual things. If there is a multiplicity of things, there is necessarily a separation between the individuals, and this separation, forming the boundary between one thing and another, is a different sort of substance from the things themselves, so we get a substance dualism. If a multiplicity of things are all made of the same substance, there must be a different substance which separates the individual things.
So we can avoid this necessary conclusion of dualism by starting from a slightly different perspective, saying there is existence, making existence a noun, the thing to be analyzed, instead of saying something exists, making existence a predicate. This allows us to defer the question of what is a "thing", until we have first determined what it means to exist.
Quoting leo
This is the problem I refer to, in distinguishing a multitude of things from one single thing. If things are isolated from one another, then we must assume some sort of substance which isolates them. So whenever we conclude that there is a multiplicity of things, we need to assume that there is something else, other than these things, which acts to separate them. This is the case regardless of whether the separation is absolute, as in your example, or relative as in my example. In each case there must be something real which separates the thing, or else they are not really separate things.
Quoting leo
OK, this is the difficult question. We might start with "existence in the now", as you say, and this is what I request above, to consider "existence" itself without reference to things. The problem here is that we cannot dismiss induction, as you request. If we are to proceed with any sound premises we must derive the premises from experience. We cannot make up imaginary assumptions of what "existence in the now" is, which are not consistent with our experience, so we must produce premises derived from induction, in order to have sound principles.
What we can say about "existence in the now", is that things are changing, and we conclude that time is passing. To deny this would be to accept an unsound principle. Therefore, I read your second paragraph above, like this. A thing which is composed of parts necessarily is influenced by something else. That "something else", is whatever provides the separation between the parts, such that they can be called individual parts. So what we observe, as time passes, is that a thing's parts are always being influenced by something else, something other than the thing itself which is making the parts into a whole. The "something else" is making the parts into distinct individuals. And, unless there is an absolutely perfect balance between the force of the thing which makes the parts into a whole, and the force of the other thing which makes the parts into separate individuals, we cannot say that this thing is unchanging.
Furthermore, we can refer to observation, and induction, to say that such an absolutely perfect balance does not exist. This is because we have no examples of a thing that is composed of parts which remains unchanging. So this idea, of a thing composed of parts which is unchanging, is an ideal, an absolute which represents nothing real. If we adopt it as a principle because it might be useful for comparison (as the basis for a scale or something), we must remember, and be careful not to accept it as a principle of what "existence in the now" means. This unchanging thing is an abstraction, removed from "the now"; the principles of "the now" we only know through induction.
Quoting leo
The principle, "existence could not come from nothing", does not mean that existence was always there. When we say that something came from something else, we mean that the something else is other than the named thing. So what is implied is that existence came from something other than existence. This principle, that "existence could not come from nothing", again, is an inductive principle. it is derived from our understanding of how things come into existence through change. I implore you not to dismiss inductive principles as unsound, because then you are left with nothing to base your principles on. You could make up any system of consistent and coherent imaginary principles and claim that your system is sound, because it is coherent and logically consistent, when really you have no means for verifying that system.
There is something special about it. “Something exists” is about our world. It is not necessarily true, because in principle it is possible than in the future it stops being true, that in the future everything ceases to exist. But now it is true.
Whereas “all white unicorns are white” is logically necessary, is true by definition but it doesn’t say anything about our world. We can also say “if there is nothing then there is nothing”, yes sure, awesome, but that doesn’t deal with our world. “Something exists” is a true fact about our world, now, and that’s important.
I do agree that functionally "Something exists" is a useful realization. But when we don't consider it's utility for us and just consider whether being mistaken about it when you accept it is somehow more logically impossible than with any other logical necessity, we are wrong.
Quoting leo
What makes you assume, multiplying a hole with a mound is in any way logical?
My understanding of quantum physics is almost zero. But I can understand the concept of an electron and a positon jumping simultaneously out of a void and disappearing back into a void.
That is as far as my knowledge goes I am afraid.
I agree that we can’t absolutely prove anything - but I can be certain about some things. Not because of experiences, thoughts, definitions, etc, but despite the uncertainty of all of these. Even if I can trust nothing at all, I can trust that something exists, and that something is aware of existence.
Experience tell us some beliefs are more likely to be true than their counter beliefs. But many we just take on authority.
But how could we be mistaken about it? Even if we believe we are mistaken about it, that very belief implies “something exists”. So we could be mistaken about the belief that “believing something implies something exists”? But if we’re mistaken about that one too then something exists. What if we’re mistaken about “if we’re mistaken about that one too then something exists”? But then something still exists. And so on and so forth.
I’m all for leaving open the possibility that we may be wrong about such and such thing, because we might discover something in the future that we hadn’t realized, however in this case that isn’t possible. If we think, something exists. If we make an assertion, something exists. If we see anything, something exists. If we refuse logic, something exists. If we don’t use language and close our eyes, something still exists. At that point keeping saying “maybe nothing exists” is not an extreme form of open-mindedness, it is a willful denial of existence, of truth, it is the will to prevent the construction of anything, in some way it is the will to destroy existence itself.
That is why I will not accept the possibility that “maybe nothing exists”. No. Something exists. It may not be the case in the future, but now it is the case. You or others can deny it all you want, I won’t force you to change your mind if your goal is to make people believe that truth cannot be known, but you will not change mine.
What makes you assume it is logical to say “zero total energy” implies nothingness? The way energy is defined, it can be zero even when plenty of things exist. I was attempting to show you that.
The electron and positron are not jumping out of a void. What seems to be a void is not a void. If you go in interstellar space, there is still the light and gravity of distant stars passing through. If you go in intergalactic space, there is still the light and gravity of distant galaxies passing through. Even if you are far enough from them that you don’t see any with the naked eye, they are still passing through, and you can detect that with the help of some instruments. What they call a void is not a void, that’s a misnomer. The electron and positron do not jump out nothingness. The space between galaxies is not nothingness, so the space in the solar system or in a laboratory here on Earth is decidedly not nothingness, even if they remove all molecules from some box there is still radiation and gravity coming from all around.
Not true. We have arrived at an infinite number of absolute truths. Some examples: No bachelor is married, No circle is a square, etc
I believe "something exists" is one of these trivial truths. Trivial because they're true by definition
As I said on the last page, “something exists” isn’t true by definition, because it is possible that in the future everything ceases to exist and then “something exists” will stop being true. But for now it is true. It is not defined to be true.
Now how about “at least two things exist”? It may not be true in the future, but can you show how it might be false now?
I think you're hinting at some Daoist principles here. It is a common idea in Daoism that for something to be it must have an opposite. When you conceive of good you necessarily conceive of bad. That's because daoists made the observation that every concept that we can possibly come up with defines itself against other concepts. Good is defined by evil, Pleasure is defined by pain, etc. This sort of "co-operative defining" is what you're describing I think.
That’s one way to see it. I wouldn’t say good is defined against evil, I wouldn’t say that we couldn’t feel happiness if we couldn’t feel suffering. But indeed there is some sort of duality in existence, good/evil, happiness/suffering, love/hate, unity/division, ..., this isn’t to say that one needs the other to exist, but for now that duality exists.
I noticed this duality, and then my train of thought was, could it be possible that this duality is an illusion and that deep down there is fundamental unity? But I came to the conclusion that the duality is fundamental (in this existence now), that it is impossible to see unity as the basis of it all, which is what I explained in the OP. And I feel it is an important conclusion.
It would be nice to formulate a simple proof, that there is not fundamental unity at the basis of this existence (be it a single force, a single consciousness, a single being, a single particle, ...), but instead that there are at least two things at the root of it all. I was hoping that some of you would help me formulate that proof, but up to now this discussion hasn’t really progressed in that direction.
I think they do
Quoting leo
I think it's simple
1- For every concept x there is a concept representing not x (!x)
2- So any "unity" we come up with and call x, there must also be !x
3- So for every "unity" we come up with there is a complementary concept
So as long as unity is a concept we can grasp it won't be one concept
OK I’m on board with that, let’s say “there is existence” instead of “something exists”.
Now the purpose of this thread is to show that in order to account for this current existence, there is necessarily a duality in it. This isn’t to say that there cannot be existence without a duality, but that in this existence there is a duality, that it is impossible that it is all united as one, impossible that there is no fundamental separation in it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
OK I get your point, yes indeed they wouldn’t be separated if there was nothing separating them. Important observation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes indeed, we cannot completely dismiss induction, we simply have to recognize that induction doesn’t necessarily yield conclusions of universal validity, but that it may help us get closer to such conclusions, and even if we have no proof of that we can keep faith in it and see where it leads, and we can see that it is a tool that helps us and that has helped us.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
OK, yes indeed in order for there to be a thing made of parts there needs to be some way to distinguish those parts, but if that thing never changed then we would never distinguish those parts. So a thing made of parts cannot remain unchanging forever. Thank you for making me realize that, that’s really important to see.
And indeed we can say that “there is existence” and that “existence changes”. However this doesn’t yet imply that existence is made of parts, because we haven’t proven that one thing cannot change. A thing made of parts necessarily changes eventually, but a thing not made of parts may change too.
And so what I want to prove, or rather what I believe can be proven, is that this existence is not one, that it is made of parts. And I believe you have brought an important piece of the puzzle by showing that a thing made of parts cannot remain unchanging forever, I believe that will be a key part of the proof.
And in order to prove that this existence is not one, that it is made of parts, I believe we can prove it by contradiction. That if we assume that existence is one thing that changes, we will be led to a contradiction.
Within what we experience, within what we see, we see a multiplicity of things, for instance the sky is separated from the ground, the day is separated from the night. I don’t think the proof is as simple as saying that we couldn’t distinguish anything from anything else if there was only one thing that changes. Or is it? If there was only one thing that changes, everything would be necessarily uniform, would change while remaining uniform everywhere, such as all white and then all black and then all orange?
But we might still say that this is an illusion, that what we perceive to be separate parts are in fact the one existence perceived at different times. But if there is such a thing as illusion and reality, then there is a duality, how existence really is and how it appears. And so no matter what we’re led to the conclusion that this existence is made of parts, that it cannot be one single thing changing.
Do you agree? Do you see holes in that proof?
Indeed that might work too. I was going to say that the concept “orange” doesn’t have an opposite, but actually everything that is not orange can be seen as “not orange”. And if we say that opposites are an illusion, if there is “illusion” then there also is “not illusion”, namely reality. So no matter what this existence is made of parts, is not one single thing that changes.
However I believe that there could be happiness without suffering, it’s simply that “happiness” would be contrasted with “everything that isn’t happiness” rather than with suffering, so for instance it would be contrasted with colors and with other perceptions that aren’t inherently suffering. That’s why I believe there can be good without evil, love without hate.
1. There is existence
2. Existence changes
3. Existence is not one thing, it is made of parts
What more can we find?
But something else than existence is non-existence, and what is non-existence if not nothingness? So if existence didn’t arise spontaneously, it must have been always there.
We find that only 1.) is true.
If 2.) is true, then one of the possible changes for existence is its negation. The negation of existence is, there isn’t existence, a contradiction.
If 3.) is true, existence requires the existence of its parts, or, existence requires existence, an absurdity.
Existence is nothing but a necessary condition for the possibility of human phenomenal experience. Nothing more, nothing less. Aristotle and Kant both called it, and others like it, a “category”. So they've been around a long time, and they’ve yet to be shown as false, illogical or un-necessary, no matter how hard we try to get rid of them.
They’re also entirely speculative, so.......there ya go.
As I said, they are true now but they may not be true in the future, I didn’t claim that they would be true forever, so there is no contradiction. You cannot even prove that 1.) will be true forever.
Quoting Mww
To say that existence is currently made of parts is not to say that there cannot be existence without parts, so I don’t see an absurdity. Care to clarify?
Quoting Mww
That’s quite reductive, how are you going to prove that statement? Or are you merely stating your personal definition of existence and pretending that it’s more than a definition? It could also be said to be a necessary condition for any experience, that doesn’t imply that existence reduces to a necessary condition, it is more than that, the experience that you’re presumably having now is part of existence too.
Even if it is true that it is a necessary condition for the possibility of experience (transcendental argument) it doesn't follow that it is "nothing more" than that. What are the ramifications you suppose this has?
ie. Yes...
Quoting leo
This isn’t mathematics; there are no empirical proofs in speculative metaphysics. The “necessary condition for the possibility of human phenomenal experience” falls out logically from the theoretical premises.
Different people, different theories, different understandings.
So are you saying that your experiences are not part of existence, because supposedly existence is “nothing more” than a necessary condition?
Also can you point out the theoretical premises I used that lead to the three truths I mentioned? From my point of view I made no assumption because all assumptions lead to these truths, these truths fall out logically, for instance if you assume they aren’t true now you reach a contradiction.
It seems to me that in order to deny these truths one has to deny logic itself, but then if we start denying logic hell ensues.
Well, I think the next move, after assuming "there is existence" would be to ask how we know there is existence. This will give us some idea of what is meant here by "existence". I think that we can go two ways here. We can refer to our senses, outside ourselves, and say that we sense things moving all around us, and this confirms "existence", or we can turn to the inside, like Descartes, looking at the passage of thoughts in the mind, and say that this confirms "existence".
Notice that in each case there is some sort of movement or change involved in the characteristics of "the thing" which demonstrates existence to us. This implies the temporal nature of existence. However, when we recognize that these two ways of apprehending 'existence" are quite distinct, we find a need for a spatial boundary between the inside and the outside, and it is this understanding of the spatial nature of existence which produces the need for a duality. Perhaps if we adhere to simple temporal terms there will be no need to assume a duality.
Quoting leo
Yes, I think this is a good point. Induction gives us "universality" in a restricted sense. It is restricted by our perspective. We want a true "universal validity", but we can only go so far as our limited capacities will allow us. So we produce generalities, universalities, but we have to guard ourselves against the inclination to conclude that they have true universal validity. On the other hand though, we need to respect the fact that we have nothing but our own experiences with which to judge any conclusions about "existence", so we must give some credence to these generalizations if we even want to start to understand. Remember, you are starting with "existence" which is the most general, so to completely exclude generalizations as unreliable, would be to exclude your own premise.
Quoting leo
This is another principle I find questionable. How could a thing which is not made of parts, change? For a thing to change, at least one part must become something other than it was. How could this happen if the thing had no parts?
I'm trying to make some general categories by which we can classify things, and this is a distinction between spatial and temporal properties of a thing. Are parts necessarily defined spatially? Is the separation between one part and another, necessarily a spatial separation? Can we consider a temporal separation between parts?
Suppose a changing thing at one time fits one description, and at a later time fits another description. We say that it is throughout the entire time, always the same thing, but it is undergoing some changes. Now we have a period of time in which the thing is existing, and at each moment in that time period, it has a different description. Can we say that at each moment, what is described, is a part of "the object", which exists as the complete temporal extension? If so, then what constitutes the separation between these parts, allowing them to be distinct parts? Don't we generally conceive of such a temporal extension as a continuity of the object, without such separations? However, without such separations within the temporal extension of the object, it appears like change to the object would be impossible. Therefore we must conclude that there is separation between the temporal parts of the object.
Quoting leo
Actually, I think we can prove that both aspects of existence, spatial and temporal, are composed of parts. In the spatial sense, we have the separation which arises from the two ways of apprehending existence, from the inside and from the outside. This produces a spatially defined boundary between the inside of the object and the outside of the object. This implies that the "existence" being described here, has parts. Also, as I just described above the temporal aspect of the object must also consist of parts, with a separation between these parts. Therefore existence, in both its temporal aspect and spatial aspect, is composed of parts.
Quoting leo
This is why we need to address the temporal extension of existence as well as the spatial extension of existence, in order to soundly prove that existence is composed of parts. If temporal extension is a continuity, then there is no division between existence at one moment and the next, and it might be argued that all of existence is just "one", perceived from different perspectives. But there is an easier way to refute this claim. That claim requires the "perspective" to be something separate from the existence being observed, and this necessitates a separation anyway. So, once we recognize the reality of the fact that existence must be composed of parts, we can move to understand how temporal extension could be composed of parts.
Quoting leo
What has happened, is that we have taken "existence" as a noun, a thing, in an attempt to describe that thing, what it means to exist. This means that we separate it from other things. So we cannot say that non-existence is nothing, because by distinguishing existence from other things we have allowed that non-existence is something..
Actually, in accordance with the transcendental argument, it does follow necessarily. Existence, the pure concept of understanding, permits nothing else than a necessary condition. The pure intuitions space and time are the necessary conditions for phenomena; the pure conceptions of the categories are the necessary conditions for phenomenal experience. Neither phenomena not the categories are used in pure thought, such as the logical laws, geometric figures, transcendent notions......and of course, the dreaded, misbegotten noumena.
I don't understand your explication. Existence is minimally presupposed for experience to be the case. What more can be derived (needs to be derived) than that? By saying existence is "nothing more than this" you are making existence conditional upon what is in fact, conditional upon it (experience).
i.e. Existence is a condition of experience, but experience is not a limitation of existence
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Thus, Kant can claim that only the form of experience is mind-dependent, not its matter; the matter of experience depends upon a source outside of the mind.[12]
In effect, yes. My experiences are not things that exist, they are merely the termination of a rational process. Physical things in space and time are part of natural reality; real things cannot be part of that which is merely a pure conception, or, the schemata of a pure conception.
“....Experience is an empirical cognition; that is to say, a cognition which determines an object by means of perceptions...”
I think something is lost by saying experience exists. The term is then required to be far to broad to really mean anything.
Yes, that’s why it and the other categories is/are called a necessary condition(s). All that needs to be derived from that regulative principle, is the logical consistency for it. And the more fundamental the premise, the easier the logical consistency, re: for that which does not exist, experience of it is impossible. Another one is, for that which is not possible, experience of it is impossible. For that which is a cause, some effect must be dependent on it. For that which is a quantity, there is also a boundary.
Reason seeks the unconditioned, the bottom line. In the human cognitive system, the bottom line is the LNC. In any mental event where contradiction arises, something is wrong in the construction of the event. All the categories do is provide the ground under which the LNC becomes manifest, and THAT is the prime determinant of our kind of knowledge.
What is LNC?
Law of Non-contradiction.
I always argue from the German Enlightenment tradition, which boils down, for all epistemological or moral intents and purposes, to Kantian Transcendental philosophy. What can I say....I’m attracted to paradigm shifts in any form. SR, GR, QM....all fascinating stuff. That, and maybe I just don’t know any better. (Sigh)
I do argue from what has become known as the transcendental argument, although Kant never called it that, but rather, justified his philosophies......
“.....by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector....”
......them being metaphysical disputes involving reason and knowledge, and ignorance standing for the improper use of the former to arrive at the impropriety of the latter. The Socratic method is dialectical, in which some arbitrary something is proven beyond doubt, in this case the logically irreducible truth of a priori synthetic propositions in mathematics, and adapting the same methodology which permits that logically irrefutable proof to a theory supporting something else, re: the limits of reason itself.
Coincidentally enough, one of the arguments which follow from all that, is (I think MetaphysicianUncover covered (?!?!) nicely).....existence (and all conceptions as categories) has no business being the predicate in a logical proposition, which is the empirical way we talk about stuff, nor do the conceptions as categories have any direct part in our thoughts, which is the rational way we talk to ourselves about stuff.
It’s quite simple really. If I say, “to be an object is to exist”, I haven’t added anything in the predicate “exists” that isn’t already given by the subject. The subject gives the predicate simply because I’ve already cognized “object” in order to use it as the subject of what I’m talking about. If objects didn’t exist, my proposition is unintelligible.
And the beat goes on......
It only matters when one needs to distinguish between what it means for Neptune to exist, and what it means for feelings to exist. The two are so completely different as to require the meaning of existence to be just as different. If he doesn’t make allowances, he is left with one conception authorizing two completely different things in the same way.
If you don’t have any trouble with it.....ok by me.
I can understand why you would say that if you assume materialism right from the start, namely that your experiences are a manifestation of an underlying process occurring in a brain. Or even if you don’t assume the existence of a brain, you’re still assuming the existence of a rational process as being prior to experiences. But we don’t have to assume that, for instance solipsists and idealists don’t assume that.
However regardless of whether you assume materialism or solipsism or idealism or whatever, you do have experiences, which you may call perceptions or feelings or thoughts, they exist no matter what, these experiences are the source of knowledge, rather than things you may imagine to exist beyond. We can assume that these experiences stem from an underlying reality, but we don’t yet have certain knowledge about that underlying reality (solipsists still have to be disproven), whereas there are things we can certainly say about experiences, such as they exist, they change, and they are made of parts.
Saying that experiences such as feelings do not exist seems to me to be the start of a dangerous slippery slope. One doesn’t have to assume that feelings exist, experiencing them is the proof they exist. Assuming that they don’t exist is what is uncorroborated.
Quoting Mww
Why would it be an issue to see experiences we call ‘love’ or ‘thought’ or ‘Neptune’ as all belonging to existence? We already separate them by giving them a different name. The issue would rather lie in assuming arbitrarily that they are so different that we won’t ever find any connection between them.
I would say we don’t even have to refer to motion, simply the sensation of ‘white’ would count as existence, even if nothing changes about that sensation, even if we think nothing about that sensation, even if absolutely nothing changes whatsoever.
Now I have to admit that this is an idealized situation, and in practice we don’t actually have that kind of experience (nor would we know if we have one, because if we are thinking about a sensation then our thoughts are changing even if the sensation itself doesn’t change, so that wouldn’t be a total absence of change).
So I can agree that “There is existence” and “Existence changes” would refer to the same truth, that existence and change are the same, that through the experience of change we reach the statement that “There is existence, there is change”.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Indeed, I agree.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The problem I see with this is that, if a thing which is not made of parts cannot change, why would a part change? A part of a thing is a thing too. And then we get into an infinite regress where each part of the thing requires parts in order to change, and themselves require parts in order to change and so on.
So I would say that a thing can change, become something other than it was, and a thing may be made of parts which can change. If a thing could not change nothing would ever change, unless we arbitrarily assume that a ‘part’ is fundamentally different from a ‘thing’ but I don’t think we are forced to introduce this complication.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Considering what I said above (that a thing not made of parts can change, and assuming you agree), I think it’s a matter of convention whether we consider that a thing is undergoing temporal change, or whether we say that the thing is its whole temporal extension and that how it is at each moment is a part of the thing. Personally I prefer to see it as a thing undergoing change, since we experience the present, or said differently we simply experience what we experience. I think assuming that we can experience the future or the past would be an unnecessary assumption, since we can simply say that we can experience an image of what we think the future will be like, or an image of what we think the past was like, which is not actually experiencing what we will experience or what we experienced.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So again assuming you agree with what I said above, we don’t have to assume that the temporal aspect of existence is made of parts, that change is made of parts, we can simply say that there is change, and that the future and the past do not exist in a strict sense, rather they are experiences that are had in the present, they are part of existence now. This is of course not to say that everything that will ever happen and everything that has ever happened is already contained in existence now, but simply that we experience images of what we think will happen or of what we think happened, and these experiences are part of existence as long as they are had.
Regarding the spatial aspect, even without speaking of an inside or an outside, I think we can simply say that what we experience is not uniform, that parts can be distinguished, and even if we assume that these parts are an illusion, if there is such a thing as an illusion then that means there is both illusion and reality, which again are two separate parts, so no matter what existence (the way it is now) is made of parts, it is not one uniform thing, it cannot be reduced to a single thing that isn’t made of parts.
There is a lot I want to say about what a thing is, and its relation to the spatial and temporal aspects of existence, but I’ll save it for a later post as this one is already getting quite long. But basically, to say it succinctly, it seems to me that we couldn’t identify things, we couldn’t identify shapes, if there was no spatial and temporal correlations within existence, if everything was random including our thoughts there would be no shape and we couldn’t experience change, so it seems that the possibility of the very concept of thing requires that there are correlations within existence, which would be an additional truth of existence, that it cannot be completely random.
And if we even go further and use the idea that strictly speaking the future and the past do not exist, that only the present ever exists, a present that changes, then temporal correlations would actually be spatial correlations too, what we interpret as a temporal correlation would be a spatial correlation, in some way we would be creating the future. In some way experiencing an image of what we think the future will be like would contribute to making that future happen. And by using the earlier idea that a thing can change on its own, become something other than it was, then the reason there would be change is not that time exists, but that existence changes, existence becomes. I’m really liking where this is going and I want to keep exploring that further, it all seems to fit together.
Because the query presupposes without warrant, that existence is that to which it is possible to belong. Logic and parsimony suggest that existence is not that which is belonged to, but rather, is that which belongs.
So you are saying existence is a property. So a thing can either have the property of existence, or not have the property of existence. From my readings, this type of position tends to be supported by logico-linguistic arguments, and rely on features of statements. I'd happily concede this kind of 'phantom-existence' to statements. On the other hand, I'd not agree that this is the fundamental or primary category of existence. To wit, say, at any given moment, there is some set of 'things' whose thinghood consists in their simultaneously being real, where each thing stands in a real relationship to at least one other real thing.
"The antonym ‘nothing’ is helpful, however, because it suggests that ‘nothing’ is a special kind of thing, namely a ‘no-thing’. This is perhaps just a quirk of language, but it puts us on the right mental track, because we can now say that a no-thing is something that has no properties.12 If it had any, those properties would indicate what sort of thing it is, in which case it would not be a no-thing. This suggests the idea that to be an existent is to have properties. Properties cannot be free-floating but have to belong to some existent (there are no actual Cheshire cat smiles without Cheshire cats). So this gives us a concise and useful definition: an ‘existent’ is ‘a bearer of properties’, and ‘nothing’ is ‘not a bearer of properties’. "
here https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/6/3/32/htm
As well you shouldn’t, your “this” being understood as the general conception “property”. The fundamental ground of properties is their capacity for measurement, or, the establishment of the inference of some relative quantity. Existence does not carry the burden of being measurable. If, instead, existence is merely a necessary condition, it need not be subject to measurement, nor the ambiguities of logic-linguistic arguments, and above all, properties need not be a fundamental category of existence.
And here’s why: anything ever talked about, or thought about, is from the perspective of human rationality. So everything absolutely must relate to us and us alone. Properties are that which we assign to objects in order, on the one hand, to arbitrate them one from another, or, which is the same thing, how they relate to each other. On the other hand, we assign conceptions to understand how they can be told apart, or, which is the same thing, how they relate to us. We use properties a posteriori for the former, but we use the categories a priori for the latter. Properties can have no bearing on the respective objects to which each set belongs, and the assignment of properties presupposes the objects to which they belong. There is no need to quantize that which doesn’t exist.
Fine. But what tells us it is not a waste of reason to assign properties? We don’t just willy-nilly think....this will be red, that will be 4” long, the other will be 16 lbs. Still fine. But to say we assign properties to that which is met with perception only tells us there is something there, but not whether it is proper that it should be there. Mirages are given properties, because they appear to perception, but experience informs us they do not exist.
OK, so what can we use to tell us that which appears really is something that actually and indubitably deserves the properties reason works so hard assigning to it. In other words, why do we say it is a waste of time talking about something of which we know nothing. And why for some of us, it is a waste of time to talk about that which is either highly unlikely or only possible? Because reason doesn’t want to waste its time, that’s why. (Illustrative figure of speech here; reason doesn’t have wants)
For warrants that reason does not waste its time, there are twelve, but only three have bearing on this dialogue: we may be assured the properties we assign are justified 1.) if that which appears exists, in which case the properties will be dependent, because of cause and effect; 2.) if that which appears necessarily exists, in which case the properties we assign will be certain, because of non-contradiction; and 3.) if that which appears possibly exists, re: mirage/hallucination, physical indiscernibles, in which case the properties will be merely contingent and subject to falsification.
In all those cases, the commonality is the existence of something outside us. Hence, it is logically justified to conclude that existence is the necessary condition for reason to assign properties to things outside us. It follows that things merely thought, residing inside us, not given from sensibility, do not warrant properties, and if they don’t warrant properties, they don’t warrant existence. This is not to say things merely thought are not real in some way, but real with respect to the thought alone, whereas the real with respect to thought AND sensibility, is a different sense of real, which is given the name “existence”.
So to answer your question directly.....no, I most emphatically not saying existence is a property.
BOOM!!!!
Ok. I hope you can see the reason for my confusion because what you said here:
Quoting Mww
rather explicitly identifies it as a property, "Property, in the abstract, is what belongs to or with something"
No boom.
Once more, this time with bullhorn and amplifier:
Quoting Mww
We’re doing the talking, the observing, the understanding, the assigning, the cognizing, the experiencing.
We assign properties a posteriori, we assign conceptions a priori.
Liquidity is assigned as a property of “water” perceived as such, so we do not intuit “dump truck” (relation of objects to each other).
Existence is assigned as a condition of water experienced as such, so we do not think it is an illusion (relation of objects to us).
Now. If you would be so kind. Gimme back my damn BOOM!!!!
Bonus round: why is water as perceived written as “water”, but water as experienced written as water?
I get it, you're a pure rationalist/idealist. I just don't feel the force of your arguments or your examples.
"Existence is assigned as a condition of water experienced as such, so we do not think it is an illusion (relation of objects to us)."
What does this even mean? Are you saying that we do not think that our experiences are illusory? Because some experiences are, in fact, illusory. I've never heard of anyone "assigning existence" to anything. Maybe ascribing existence? Even inferring existence. How can you assign existence?
Then you got it wrong; no pure idealist, more commonly called a subjective idealist, the domain of The Esteemed Bishop Berkeley, grants the physical existence of material objects as anything other than the machinations of the mind alone. I, on the other hand, do grant material objects an existence completely independent of human experience, while maintaining that knowledge about those objects, is very much solely dependent on the thoroughly human cognitive system that tells us about them, by means of their affect on our sensibility. Most properly, that is known as the transcendental idealist epistemological philosophy. Besides, it’s really absurd to deny materialism, then try to explain to myself that my own body is merely an idea in my mind.
———————-
Quoting Pantagruel
Of course they are, or can be. But.....why? If everything ever talked about, thought about, cognized, experienced, has primarily to do with us, then illusion must have to do with us as well. Either that, or the determinism of physical science, and the apodeictic truth of mathematics, is forfeit, because we can’t tell wherefrom the illusion arises. We really cannot conceive the forfeiture of determinant physical science, which leaves the fault of illusion manifest in reason.
Reason was never theorized to be perfect; it couldn’t be, without contradicting itself.
————————-
Addendum, re: your added query, added last:
Quoting Pantagruel
Short answer: understanding thinks it.
A parking lot full of cars. And the classic example being Einstein’s famous quip, “I refuse to believe the moon is not there if I am not looking at it”. (Or something like that) We grant the reality of the moon without its perception because understanding thinks the moon exists, and thinks such without the aid of immediate experience. Notice this subconscious procedure doesn’t work for that which has never been, nor can ever be, an experience, because understanding does NOT think existence to as-yet or impossible experiences. We never grant existence to anything we cannot cognize, and thus become either experience or possible experience.
As for the row of cars, it is easy to see our attention is drawn to the closer, or the further, but never both simultaneously, but nonetheless reason acknowledges surreptitiously the existence of the remainder of the row not in attention. We know they are there as mere uncognized objects, without ever actually perceiving them. The fact they exist therefore, cannot be given from sense, so the fact of “existence” can only be given from the subjective realm of understanding.
OK, but this is where we need to be careful in our description. Change requires that there is something which is changing And so we have the dualism problem again. We have the thing and the changes which occur to the thing. If we associate existence with change in the sense of "existence and change are the same", then when we direct our attention to the thing which is changing, we need to us terms other than "existence".in that description.
Quoting leo
This is why we need to be careful in our description. A thing is a whole, a unity. Suppose that a thing is made of parts, and the parts are in relations with each other. When the relations between the parts change, the thing changes. but this doesn't necessarily mean that the parts themselves change. If a thing has no parts, there are no internal relations, and the thing does not change. The relations between it and other things might change, but this is not a change to the thing itself, it is a change to some larger unity of this thing and other things (as parts).
It has been common in the past, and remains so, to assume a fundamental "part" or element, to avoid the infinite regress, this was the atom in ancient times, matter, or the fundamental particle. What we have here is a base thing, which does not itself change, but by existing in different relations, it composes all existing things.
Quoting leo
The problem is that we want to avoid the infinite regress. If a thing can change, and a thing can be a part, then a part can change. Now we have an infinite regress of parts, and it really doesn't make sense to think that there is always smaller parts ad infinitum. So we posit the fundamental part, which has no parts. And, since it has not parts, it cannot change. This fundamental "unit", must be different from other entities, because it is not composed of parts. But this creates other problems such as timelessness, etc. This complication we cannot avoid. We can describe things in terms other than parts and changing relations, but to remain true to real observations, the complication will arise in another way.
Quoting leo
But we must say something about "change", describe it, if we want to understand it. And we cannot do this with assuming multiple things (parts) in relation to each other. So it's pointless to just say "there is change", and therefore avoid talking about parts, because then we cannot understand change.
But it’s not a presupposition, it’s a definition, existence is defined here as all that exists. Existence cannot belong to anything else than existence. And what exists belongs to existence by definition. Your position is self-contradictory.
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
This thread is about finding truths that are valid now regardless of what we assume. As I said solipsism hasn’t been disproven, yet you assume it is false, you assume humans exist even when they aren’t perceived, you assume things exist beyond experiences that are had, you can believe that if you like, but don’t pretend that your belief is true no matter what.
“Existence is made of parts” is true now no matter what is assumed, you disagreed in an earlier post, if you still disagree then show how it could be false now, Metaphysician Undercover and I have proven that it cannot be false now, unless you find a flaw in the proof then you have no ground to say that it is false. And so if you arbitrarily claim that something proven true is false, while claiming that an unproven belief of yours is true, that’s a problem.
And just in case, when I talk of “you”, I’m not presupposing that solipsism is false, because “you” could simply refer to a content of my experiences rather than a human being existing independently of me perceiving it. I do believe other beings exist, but for now we haven’t proven it’s true no matter what we assume, here we’re looking for what’s true now no matter what we assume.
Quoting Mww
You can think unicorns exist on the moon too, that doesn’t imply unicorns exist on the moon independently of the thought of it. Just because you think things exist beyond your experiences, does not imply in itself that things exist beyond your experiences.
Sorry for the late reply
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I see where you’re getting at, but do you agree that without the experience of change we wouldn’t even come up with the concept of “existence”? Without the experience of change there wouldn’t be thoughts, there would only be a single thought, or a single color, a single experience that never changes, and we couldn’t even think about that experience. So it seems to me that “change” is more fundamental than a “thing”. There can be change that is so random that no specific thing can be identified within this change, and we can’t identify a thing without change.
In that view then and to avoid confusion, maybe we should talk of change instead of existence?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But what are relations, if not things themselves? It seems you are assuming two fundamental distinct entities: things and relations. You are also assuming that a thing without parts cannot change on its own. Why would a relation without parts be able to change on its own, and not a thing without parts? It seems to me that if you assume a thing without parts cannot change you’re running into the same problem concerning a relation without parts.
Maybe if we start from the concept of change instead of starting from the concepts of things and relations, we won’t run into these problems. Change occurs, and within that change things can be identified, in that they are parts of the change that temporarily do not change in relation to the rest. What do you think of this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don’t see where there is the infinite regress when we say that a part can change, why would we have to assume that a fundamental part does not change?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes we can describe that change. Let’s say you have the experience of ‘white’ (you’re close to a white wall and you’re only seeing white), you might say this is a thing that doesn’t change, but no there is still change, your thoughts are changing, you only see the white as not changing because your thoughts are changing and allowing you to think that. And there the change can be seen as made of parts, one part is the thoughts that you are having and the other part is the sensation of ‘white’ that is not changing in relation to your thoughts, but they form one whole, you can’t see the ‘white’ as not changing without having changing thoughts at the same time. Do you see where I’m getting at?
Yes, it doesn't even really make sense to speak of the possibility of experience without change, as change is so fundamental. However, we shouldn't dismiss its dichotomous partner, "being", if we define "being" as remaining the same, through time, continuity, consistency. In experience, we tend to notice things which stay the same for some period of time. In fact, it appear necessary that something stay as it is for some period in order for us to even notice it. Imagine if at every moment, everything nlittle part of existence changed in some completely random fashion. So if we look at the ancient dichotomy of being and becoming (change) it would be difficult to say which is more fundamental to our experience. To notice one seems to require that we notice the other. To get to the bottom of this, we can divide the two in analysis, and see what conditions underlie each of them.
Quoting leo
I don't understand what you could be talking about here. A "relation" requires two things, therefore the relation necessarily has parts. It doesn't make sense to speak of a relation without parts. I definitely was not assuming a relation without parts.
Perhaps you misunderstood the point I was making. If two distinct things are shown to be in a relation to one another, then by virtue of that relation, we have indicated that those two things are parts of a larger thing. If the "relation" is valid then a larger unity is indicated.
However, things and relations are fundamentally distinct. Relations are what we predicate of things, whereas the things themselves are the subject of predication. So a relation is what a thing is said to have, but it does not make the thing itself. Likewise, a thing has parts, but the parts do not make the thing itself, because the parts must exist in specific relations. These are the analyzed principles of the two above mentioned aspects of experience, parts and relations.
Experience, as a thing, the subject of consideration, has two features, parts and relations between the parts. For the sake of understanding, we say that the parts remain the same, as time passes, and all that changes is the relations between the parts. This is Aristotle's matter and form. The matter remains the same while the form changes. The problem is that we always learn to divide the parts further, then it appears like the part is made of parts with changing relations. To end the infinite regress, some will posit a "prime matter", the fundamental part, not composed of parts, therefore not itself changing, as the basis for all existence. Reality would consist of fundamental parts existing in different relations. The problem is that Aristotle demonstrated this prime matter as illogical,
And if we proceed to assume relations as fundamental, then it doesn't make sense to speak of relations without parts. Therefore we are really missing something in our analysis. What has come up, in much metaphysics is that what is missing here is "the cause". If parts exist in relations to each other, there must be a cause of this. It is our failure to address this feature, that leads to the unending analysis of parts and relations, seeking to find the bottom, the most fundamental, when we are actually neglecting the most fundamental thing, which is the cause of this unity between parts and relations, the cause of parts existing in relations. So to avoid the dead end analysis of parts and relations, we need to turn our attention toward "the cause".
Quoting leo
Yes, if we start with "change", we will see that change requires a cause, and so we are on the right track here.
Quoting leo
Change is a difference in relations between things. So if a thing changes, the relations between its parts have changed. There is no other way that a thing could change, that is change, a change in relations. But if a part can change, then it must be composed of parts, and so on to infinite regress. To avoid the infinite regress we assume a fundamental part, what the ancient Greeks called atoms, and in modern physics is fundamental particles. Aristotle demonstrated that this is illogical, as "prime matter".
Quoting leo
Sorry, I made a typo, I meant to say we cannot do this without assuming parts, instead of saying "with" assuming parts. My mistake. I meant to say that we cannot explain "change" without assuming parts in relation to each other. Change requires parts.
And with that, I see my effort here is not well-spent.
Carry on.
Since you don’t address the points I make, I have to agree. You’re not interested in understanding or addressing the points that other people are making in this thread, while I have addressed yours, apparently you’re not looking for a discussion, you don’t want to consider that you may be wrong, you just want people to agree with you, well I explained why I disagree with you, if you’re not liking that and you aren’t willing to explain why you disagree with my explanation then indeed your posts in this thread are a waste of time for both of us.
I agree that in order to experience change there has to be something that stays the same in relation to what is changing, for instance a thought, because if everything was changing randomly including our thoughts we wouldn’t even have a static thought that would tell us we are experiencing randomness, we wouldn’t have any memory and so on. But even though some things temporarily don’t change in relation to some other change, we don’t have to assume that it is necessary that some thing never changes. We have no evidence that something can never change forever, while we have evidence of change.
We are certain of change but not of being. What we interpret as not changing might be simply change that is not perceived, for instance something might seem unchanging and yet by looking more closely we see change. Also, if one part of experience is not changing while another part is changing, the whole experience is changing as a whole, so again change appears as more fundamental than being. For these reasons I think it will be more fruitful to see change as fundamental rather than being.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Would you agree with the idea that fundamentally what we call a “relation” is a thought, an experience? The idea that “change occurs” follows from experiences that are seen to change. Where does the idea of a “relation” come from? Doesn’t it come from seeing that some part of experience is correlated with some other, that the two parts change not independently from one another, but together in some way?
Where I’m going with this is that you were saying that a thing without parts cannot change on its own, but if you agree that a relation is fundamentally an experience, a thought, a thing, then again why would that experience or thought or thing change on its own? If you say that this relation is made of parts, and that this is why the relation can change, then we’re back to asking why do the parts of that relation change in the first place?
Basically it seems to me that you can’t escape the fact that a thing without parts can change, that it can become something different than it was, which again leads to the idea that change is more fundamental than being. It seems to me that it is a circular reasoning to say that “a thing with parts can change because the relation between the parts can change”, because in saying that you’re essentially saying that the relation can change on its own, or that the parts of the relation which are themselves not made of parts are changing on their own. Do you see what I mean?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If we see change as more fundamental than being then a thing is simply an absence of change in relation to some other change. And then we don’t have to explain how a thing changes, change is what’s fundamental, a partial absence of change is what has to be explained, and we can explain it simply by seeing it as two opposite changes that cancel one another (or as several changes in equilibrium). Would you agree with that?
And then it isn’t that “change requires parts”, we can simply say that parts of the change are seemingly unchanging in relation to other parts.
I think we could see that as a solid foundation for knowledge and move from there.
Right, I agree with this. But I'd say it's more like this, something unchanging is necessary for experience itself, it's fundamental to experience. And, as you conclude, it is not necessary for this unchanging thing to be never changing. This is why causation becomes paramount. How is it that a thing can be the same for a while, then not be the same. A cause of change is necessary.
The idea of a thing which never changes comes from the necessity of ending the infinite regress. So both ideas, that there is something unchanging, and that there is something which never changes, are produced by logical necessity. To ground experience, and give it reality, we need to assert an underlying consistency, sameness,and also to give reality to the thing which we experience, the sensible world, we assume the existence of an underlying "matter" the fundamental element which never changes.
Quoting leo
This is why it appears like we are more certain of change than of being. Change is fundamentally evident to us, while the idea of being is produced by logical necessity. Change is the premise, and that there is something "the same" is the conclusion produced by the fact that not everything changes. Logic proceeds from the more certain to the less certain. But as you'll see below, we can turn around and face those premises, as potentially uncertain themselves, and look for the most certain of all premises.
.Quoting leo
I don't think it is possible that everything is changing. This would mean that from one moment to the next, absolutely everything changes. Then there would be no consistency whatsoever, and the entire world would be complete chaos and randomness. It would be completely impossible for us to understand the world at all, because we could make no principles about how things would be from one moment to the next, because such a principle is based in assuming that something stays the same from one moment to the next.
That is why, despite the fact that we experience things as changing, the most certain of all premises is the premise that something stays the same. This is basically the principle which Plato impressed on us. We must get beyond the illusory world which the senses are handing us, to look at the reality of intelligible principles. All the premises concerning change, which we derive from our sensations of the world, have fundamental uncertainties inherent within. So we must look beyond sensation, toward what makes sensation possible in the first place, to derive the most certain of all premises, from which to build any structure of knowledge.
Quoting leo
This is exactly why we must place sameness, or being, as the most fundamental principle. If we do not, we cannot get a true perspective of what a "relation" is. You have brought "relation" into the experience, as if it is something which is part of the experience, when in reality we see a "relation" as a part of the thing experienced. Consider the map and the territory analogy. A relation is part of the territory, and we map it using principles. So within the experience, there are principles not relations, and we use the principles to map the relations which are outside the experience as part of the world being sensed.
Now consider principles themselves. We could say that there are relations between principles, but that would imply the principle is an independent thing existing by itself, relative to other principles. However, principles don't really exist like that, they are inherently connected to one another, supporting each other and dependent on each other, so it is somewhat incorrect to portray them as independent objects existing in relations to each other.
Now, see that you and I come to agreement about the nature of our experience. As you say "the two parts change not independently from one another, but together in some way". This is because the "two parts", which I portrayed as "principles" above, do not exist separately from one another, as independent things. There is dependency. So let's say that "parts" do not exist as independent objects, and they do not exist in relations with each other. Let's say that there is a "whole", and the part exists as a part of the whole, and being part of a whole is something other than a relation, it's some sort of dependency.
Quoting leo
So this is a very good question, and I'll show you how I can resolve it. A relation is now something outside of the thing. There is not "relations" within the thing, but dependency between parts. Within a thing there are parts, but the parts don't exist by relations. The parts are like principles which exist more like in a hierarchy of dependency. Now the question is what causes a thing to change, so we must look to the structure of this hierarchy of principles to understand this.
What is implied here is that we pay attention to Aristotle's distinction between the two ways of depicting change, locomotion (change of place), and internal change. Now we are focused on internal change, and the question is how does a thing change. To understand this we need to understand how a hierarchy of principles exists and changes. Changing a fundamental principle will have a huge effect, while changing a fringe principle will have a minor effect. But the question is what causes a principle to change in the first place.
Quoting leo
I see what you're saying, but the answer is that there is no such thing as a thing without parts. A thing only exists as such a hierarchy of parts, and without that there is no thing. So you've taken an impossibility "a thing without parts", and asserted that this thing can change. But without parts, there is nothing there, no thing.
The issue is the "circular reasoning", which appears from the hierarchical thinking. The hierarchy of parts implies a top position, or base position depending on your perspective, so let's just call it #1 position. Also, there is no hierarchy unless there is something which follows #1. So "hierarchy" implies more than one, yet #1 implies priority. The circularity is avoided by assigning priority to #1. But there is no hierarchy unless there is more than one, and if there is more than one, how does a specific part acquire the position of #1. Therefore we must look to something other than the parts to assign #1 to, and again we meet with causation. There is a balance between the parts in the hierarchy, which allows them to exist as a unity, and the balance is caused. This cause is what we can assign #1 to. So #1 exists not as a part of the hierarchy, but as the cause of it.
To answer the question we can look to the nature of "cause". "Cause" is a temporal concept, and the cause is always in the past. The past cannot be changed. Therefore the #1, being the thing without parts, and the cause of parts existing in a hierarchical balance, necessarily cannot change or be changed, being in the past. The cause does not exist as a relation to the thing, because it is within the thing, like part of the thing yet still not the same as a part of the thing, because of the priority we must assign to it.
Quoting leo
As explained above, any premise based in change is less reliable, more uncertain than a premise based in being, or sameness. So your suggested approach cannot give us the required degree of certainty.
That's one of the reasons I'm an idealist. We know absolutely mind(s) and ideas exist. We don't have the same surety regarding physical matter.
I see we’re in disagreement over what is more fundamental, more reliable, more certain: change or being. That’s good, it means if we can uncover the root reason why we disagree we will make progress.
I’m going to (re)state reasons for seeing change as more fundamental and against seeing being as more fundamental, and address your points in that regard, let me know if I missed something important.
(note that when I say that change is more fundamental I’m not saying that there is nothing that temporarily stays the same within the change.)
1. Change is immediately evident to us, you agreed with that, whereas being is not immediately evident.
2. If being (absence of change) was most fundamental then there wouldn’t be change by definition, yet there is change. If being changes it is no more being.
3. Change cannot be an illusion because it would be a changing illusion, and thus there would be change. Whereas absence of change can be an illusion, it can be change appearing to be unchanging.
4. An experience is made of parts, for instance there can be simultaneously a feeling and a thought. There may be one part that is seen to be unchanging, but in order to see it as unchanging there is another part that is changing, for instance a thought that is interpreting some part of experience as unchanging. The thought itself is changing, if it wasn’t changing it wouldn’t come to see the other part as unchanging, it would remain stuck on a past thought. So within experience there is always change, the experience as a whole is changing.
5. As another way to rephrase 4., a part of experience doesn’t exist independently from the other parts, they are parts of one whole, so as long as one part is changing the whole is changing.
6. Even if we can find regularities within the change, these regularities wouldn’t exist without the change. Even if something remains temporarily the same within the change, that doesn’t make it more fundamental than the change. There can be sameness within change but there can’t be change within sameness.
7. You might say that if change was fundamental then fundamentally there wouldn’t be truth, because truth is what remains unchanging. However I would say that what is true now isn’t guaranteed to remain true forever. Something that remains the same while everything else is changing may not remain the same forever. Maybe what remains the same depends on what beings do, and the very continued existence of beings may depend on what they do, and what they do is change.
And to address specific points you made:
8. As a reason against seeing change as fundamental, you said you think if change was fundamental then everything would change and the world would be complete chaos and randomness. However I disagree, because why would we have to assume that everything would be changing randomly? Smooth change still counts as change.
9. You say that “the idea of a thing which never changes comes from the necessity of ending the infinite regress”. As to how that infinite regress arises, you say: “Change is a difference in relations between things. So if a thing changes, the relations between its parts have changed. But if a part can change, then it must be composed of parts, and so on to infinite regress.”. But notice that in this reasoning you assume in the first place that there are unchanging things that exist, which is what you end up concluding. If you don’t assume that unchanging things exist fundamentally, then there is no infinite regress and so no necessity to conclude that there are things which never change.
So based on all this I still think that we have to see change as a solid foundation for knowledge, rather than being. And the whole quest is to understand how that change evolves, and to change it.
Isn't this contradictory though? If there is something which stays the same, within change, then how can change be more fundamental? If "being" is inherent within change, then there is no change without being, and change cannot be more fundamental.
Quoting leo
This is a good point, but we must ask why is change immediately evident to us. Then we see that change is only evident against a backdrop of "being". Without that back drop, nothing would be evident. This is the issue that you need to consider more carefully, what makes it possible that change is evident to us. Pure, and absolute change, would be the randomness I described, everything different at every moment. And, you can't just dismiss this by saying that's not the type of change I'm talking about, I'm talking about change that has being within it, because then the change you are talking about cannot be more fundamental.
Quoting leo
This is not true. As I've described, for being to change all that is required is a cause. This is where I'm trying to lead the discussion, toward "causation", but by insisting that change is fundamental you have no need to consider causation. "Change" just is, being the most fundamental, and there is no need for causation. But when being is placed as more fundamental, then we need a cause of change.
Quoting leo
"Illusion" presupposes a being which suffers the illusion, so this argument is not applicable. You seem to be forgetting, that all these terms we are using are applied by us, human beings. So we cannot remove from the picture, the fact that we are discussing the human perspective. That is why, in response to your #1 above, I said we need to consider why change is most evident to us. It appears like you take the "us" for granted, and want to move on towards analyzing what we perceive, as what is most fundamental, but we can't do that because you've already placed "us" as prerequisite, and therefore the most fundamental.
Quoting leo
This is fine, but again you need to accept that any appeal to "experience" presupposes something which is experiencing. Therefore the thing which is experiencing is more fundamental than the experience itself, as necessary for the experience.
Quoting leo
So this approach is pointless. We cannot proceed to analyze the thing experienced, "change", as if it is more fundamental than the thing which experiences the change. What you say, that one of these, sameness or change is "within" the other is irrelevant at this point, because it cannot be determined until we establish the proper relation between the two.
"Change" is what we experience, what is immediately evident to us. So this "change" is already "within" us, as that which is experienced within us. The "us" is already more fundamental than the change experienced, so this points us in the direction of looking inside ourselves, to see what constitutes "us", in order to determine what is more fundamental. Therefore to determine whether change is within sameness, or vise versa, we need to look inside ourselves. Instead of looking at the thing observed, we need to look at the observer, because we can only approach the thing observed through the intermediary of the observation, and the observer is presupposed as more fundamental than the observation.
Quoting leo
I see that you don't quite understand this objection. If there is anything which remains unchanged from one moment to the next, this qualifies as sameness. In order to place change as more fundamental, we need to be able to conceive of change complete devoid of sameness, thus demonstrating the priority (fundamentality) of change. Otherwise we have a duality of change and sameness, and no principles whereby the claim that one is more fundamental than the other might be justified.
So, from my perspective, being or sameness is placed as the most fundamental. And, we can conceive of being without change, this is absolute rest. From this point, we need a cause of change. You might argue that the "cause" is itself a change, and therefore the being which is at absolute rest must coexist with this change. However, traditional metaphysics has adopted the principles required to conceive of this cause of change as distinct from change itself, in the same way that a cause is distinct from the effect. From the perspective of "change", cause and effect are inherently tied together as "an event", but from the perspective of "being" the cause and the effect are distinct.
Quoting leo
This would be a valid objection, if you yourself could conceive of change without being, as a starting point. Since you cannot, you have already assumed "that unchanging things exist fundamentally". Therefore my starting premise is acceptable to both of us. Until you can adopt a starting point of absolute change, which is the complete randomness that I described, you cannot dismiss my starting point of "unchanging things that exist fundamentally". Therefore your objection has no place, because you yourself have also assumed that unchanging things exist fundamentally. Once you see that we cannot remove being or sameness in any absolute way, because this is unsupported and irrational, yet we can remove change in an absolute way, then the consequences of this will appear more reasonable to you.