First, apologies: I tend to be sloppy with terminology. In future will stick with tenet that reality has degrees but existence doesn’t; reality is the set of all things that exist—existence is the ‘big picture’ that various realities populate.
Second, more apologies: by asking me about my worldview you’re summoning one of the most feared beasts on internet message boards, the terrible long-windedness of Anomaly654. Poor fellow, you might as well have shouted “Release the Kraken!”
No contradiction. Was pointing out that human uncertainty of absoluteness of the scientific laws is based on a deficiency in knowledge, but increasing accuracy over centuries of scientific investigation suggests the absolute nature of said laws [or of some such set of laws governing existence] whether we have full knowledge of them or not.
I was under the impression that they are philosophical constructs of reality that are commonly adapted to religious, political, etc. worldviews. But you’re right, I shouldn’t drag them into ontological discussions.
Defining truth is impossible for me or anyone to do unambiguously. Nothing can be described with certitude including physical descriptions. And “meaningful” to whom? Epistemic/ontological standards differ radically.
I’ll attempt meaningfully.
Gave some basic reasons for interchangeability of information and value earlier, Will skip to the hard part, value, truth and force as I see these as the meat of the issue.
Value definitions:
Conferred or attributed: Value attributed to a thing, process, person or set of circumstances (as in paper and coin money, civil and criminal law, appointment to an office or deterioration of a manufactured product or constructed facility), subject to both natural and artificial mutability.
Actual or inherent: The autonomous possession of accumulated force of truth or falsity by any informational entity that can be conveyed to perception. Limited to aesthetic, practical or utilitarian conveyance in inorganics with the additional presence of moral, normative and ethical content in living entities.
Mutability of attribution: The change of a physical macro informational entity achieved by a process of reconfiguration of its constituent parts.
Mutability by falsification: A change in actual value state of information from true to false or the reverse.
Perceived Falsification Apprehension of negative conditions in the loss of instrumental good(s), as cancer is said to falsify the good of health and life, decay of food perceived as a falsification due to loss of capacity to impart nutrients to sustain wellbeing, or loss of resources contribute to disagreeable life conditions.
Value is conceptually indistinct, covers a pretty wide territory. When the term is sharpened, value in every category consists in one of two possible grades, true and false. Where the concept of value can be moved about in idea to and from nearly anything, truth is more refined, focused and powerful.
Attributed value can be moved from one object or set of circumstances to another, but truth is a condition of existence. Truth in this view has two primary functions. First, from the perspective of perception truth elicits a movement, act, placement, intention or direction of a mind (will) toward any value-bearing object or entity. Second, unlike electromagnetic force where opposites attract and likes repel, value employs the opposite function, truth attracts truth [t ^ t] and falsity attracts falsity [f ^f], while opposites repel [t<>f]; [f<>t]. (Sorry if confusing, don’t know if there are symbols for attraction and repulsion.)
This suggests is that the power or forces present from a physical point of view processing a simple observation of material reality relies on the t^t union between truth-bearingness of a mind and that of the entity observed. Because matter exists only in a true state, there is no falsity in matter to “fool” or cloud the t^t function. I’ve stated before that in Avicenna’s conception of truth in the essence [information] of things explains why the popular theories of truth aren’t actually accounts of what truth is, they only describe what truth does. Correspondence is just the t^t connection between mind and thing (or state of affairs) examined.
The t<>f repulsion is more involved. Falsity is unique to organics, specifically [possibly only] to intellectual agents. The t<>f conflict functions primarily in prescriptive matters, not a philosophical topic so won’t be discussed here.
But falsity also plays a role in intellectual operation with material existence. The assumption here is that the soul is a word that signifies a single informational entity—a human agent—in concurrent possession of two kinds of interdependent value which creates prescriptive energies and realities within descriptive existence. Only the prescriptive value of an agent can be falsified, but this actual falsification can affect reasoning and perception just as a physical brain injury can. On the macroscopic level the brain injury is a perceived falsification because it denies the good of healthy cognitive operation even while the rearranged physical microparticles associated with the brain injury retain their per se truth values. Falsity is perceived in pain and discomfort caused by injury plus loss of function. Actual falsification, because if affects primarily the rational functions associated with moral and ethical decisions, is largely but not entirely restricted to the acquisition and maintenance of moral beliefs. This is why I told En-De I mourn the erosion of societal truth by fragmental falsification; it appears to be adding to strife in virtually all societal contexts. After a few years spent trying to map out correlations, effects and outcomes of the t<>f conflict from a theological approach I stumbled across what turns out to be a secular version of the same concept in psychology. Cognitive Dissonance holds that people, typically expected to be motivated to act consistently with acquired beliefs, values, and perceptions, exhibit psychological inconsistency or disagreement between disparate pieces of information. This inconsistency produces dissonance. This is just the sort of discord found in the t<>f tension. The dissonance is relatively inert in perception in union with the material universe. 4+4=7 produces only a mild tension in the mind, while the violation of truth in prescriptive matters creates a much more robust resistance. To demonstrate I use this thought experiment:
You’re holding a heavy hammer in your hand. Observe your reactions as you imagine striking each of the following as hard as you can, in order:
- a large rock
- thistles
- a flowering lilac bush
- an ant hill swarming with ants
- a cat
- a human infant
A consensus of people of reasonable mental health who, all things being equal, could be called “morally normal”, will sense an increase in the falsification of the prescriptive good of life as the hammer struck each entity in succession. The natural increase in horror and revulsion in damage to the succeeding forms suggests a quantitative falsification, a quality or value unassociated with the rearrangement of matter itself. This prescriptive “resistance” is wholly different in kind than the value of perceived falsifications as reactions to losses of instrumental goods.
Sorry for the length, but background is included for difficulty of trying to convey these ideas accurately. The main thing I’m aiming at is that truth and value have no meaning apart from their perception or institution by intellectual-level or higher minds. Value is more generic and is imposed on features and states of material existence by humans, e.g., the ten dollar bill has value—it’s true that the ten dollar bill is, in normal transactions between buyer and seller, worth exactly ten dollars.
But value isn’t only a human convention, it’s a pre-existent quality in existence. I see truth as a necessary component of existence. I immediately liked your PtA concept, it seemed to fit well into the informational construct I work within. But as it plays out, as much as I’m able to understand your stuff [am still studying posts here and videos, the concepts are a wonderful mental exercise for me], in the universe I see, truth itself is the power or force, and the truth-bearingness of each iota of information is the dynamic that produces meaning precisely because of the t^t attraction. That’s why I asked you what the mechanism was for PtA to develop points rather than some other symmetry in the transition to affectance; how can power undirected produce symmetry? Though its not currently clear to me why PtA is “motivated to move” from its seeming comfortable position as potential to take the form of affectance, it’s less clear why affectance “chooses” to begin populating the universe in symmetrically clear patterns?
I’m not picking on RM:AO; you may have proper answers to these questions that I don’t yet grasp. I initially ran into this problem with an informational reality. Assuming some arbitrary quantity of truth-force [something very close or maybe identical to PtA] exists in both P and V in an iota of information, it would seem to coarsely follow that various size “bundles” of information are required to form the various entities, abstract and concrete, we find in experience. But why would information have any reason to form separate and distinct entities—same question for PtA-Affectance?
The answer seems to me to lie outside informational reality. Form as an “external” energy source [or set of forces] supervising information as its organizing principle seems able to account for ordering of symmetrical patterning, equilibrium and proportion of information into its various particulars and proper supervision of their participative internal and external connections and interactions.
I used quotes on “external” to address your comment…
The construct I use with Form as an external energy or set of forces need not be interpreted as God. I find the purported laws of science as external ordering process in imminent union with informational reality obvious and uncontroversial, though some deny its(their) external nature. If truth value (and especially truth-bearingness) attains from energy within informational existence I’m not aware of a mechanism for it.
This is a compatibilist paradigm. Immutable Form [Truth, capitalized to identify it as functionally distinct from ordered information] organizes the immutable truth value of material information to produce the mutable realities we experience. In this sense mutation only acts in accordance with Form’s parameters. Same principle holds true for the prescriptive value in intellectual agents, except for me the workings and processes that arise from this portion of reality plays out theologically and includes other value aspects not pertinent here.
So, for me the existence of truth is necessary for the prevention of chaos. If there is a truth-force acting within existence whose source isn’t conveyed, produced, constructed or transmitted by human means then it’s either the product of design by an external source or arises from nothing. But that’s just how I see things. Either way we’re all taking the same train.