But I’m not doing that. I am saying we cannot rule out things we don’t know about. We can’t call them non-existent either. We can only look at what we can look at.
We, so far, sure. But when you start talking about what deities can do or not do, it is just unsubstantiated imagination.
There’s only two requirements for “2+2=4”.
i) discrete experience, and given this,
ii) the definitions we use for 2, +, = and 4, which boil down to the distinction between 0 and 1.
So saying that there’s no possible universe where 2+2=/=4 is actually contingent upon these two conditions, without which 2+2=/=4. Simple enough.
Discrete experience just means splitting up experience even though it is continuous, and the distinction between 0 and 1 is just a description of that process: where 0 is no identified consistency such as to constitute a thing, and 1 is a basic unit of some tier of relative consistency to constitute a thing. Do that twice, we call it “2”, do that 2 more times (2+2) and we call that equal to “4”.
It works up perfectly clearly and linearly from the most fundamental basics of experience, and all you need to do is interfere with the process for it to not hold in some possible universe.
We didn’t create the need for utility - what we understand as entropy did that for us, but we did create the approach we’re currently using towards utility. Or rather, we adapted to be able to do it, and we created the specifics and the words we chose to use to that end.
Subtantiating imagination isn’t literal - we don’t like “summon into reality” things from another realm of forms, imagination is measurable in reality, it’s of reality itself. We sense how things are, we mess around with their order in imagination and then mess around with their order in the same way in reality until we sense the “newly created” things that we made.
Relative inconsistency is generally identified as motion, which in itself can have relative consistency - we come up with a new dimension of measurement along which to dissect quanta of discrete experience. All experience is perceivable by definition, the forms are just relatively more consistent subject to how experience presents itself to us and how we break it apart in order to understand and predict it.
All experience is perceivable by definition, the forms are just relatively more consistent subject to how experience presents itself to us and how we break it apart in order to understand and predict it.
The perception of experience through forms which precede definitively the constructions and deconstructions of modes of understanding, are analogous to Shakespeare’s famous line, " To be, or not to be, that is the question …", .
For that expresses Being as innately belonging or existing outside that basic condition.
Is there a set of quantifiably defined sets where there is no distinction between 0 and 1? Is a singularity essential to denote a plenum consistent with all possible worlds?
Every singular extinction appear as a definitive formal existential inconsistency , in itself, with such a form.
If, a reduction is a necessary form of how experience presents it’s self, then it has nothing to do with our will to break it down, but it has this structural tendency for it. Formal definitions of this relative process are then not consistent with a reflexive mode within itself, but effected by structurally inclusive characteristics typifying all existence.
Therefore, there can be no set where 1=0.
I think that is what You are saying, if understood correctly.
The earliest thoughts about universals have yet to be superceeded.
You will object to the tautology in the above proof, but it is strangely equally a tautology to ‘exit’ then to enter the domain of relative inconsistencies.
In fact there are no singularly consistent forms other then types of resemblances that existence presents to us.
Especially this:
“All experience is perceivable by definition, …”
Here, is a basic weakness as a postulate, since some experiences are undefined, especially those that signify mythically reduced pseudo consistencies. The will is weakened, to choose, between to be, or not, and this ambiguity challenges the futility of finding hidden meaning.
It would be more apt to say , ‘most experience is perceivable by definition’, since perception is never severed by relative preceptions. The myths are often sustained in that manner.
The myth of Sysyphus can not be a literal interpretation of morality.
Silhouette and Karpel,
Let’s back up here.
You’re both attacking the part of the OP that you both feel that most confidence in.
The first part of my OP perplexed james Saint to no end:
: if something novel occurs that’s never ever occurred before, there are only 2 options:
1.) something comes from nothing at all
2.) it’s always been in some form
I argue 2 because one is a clear contradiction, and in arguing 2, I assert that the permanence exists in another dimension. A dimension of eternal forms. Otherwise it came from something else, which is novel and means the exact same as coming from nothing at all.
I’ve always had a problem with these conceptions due to the innate lack of Falsifiability. In Kantian terms, the noumenal world is beyond our ability to directly perceive. Anything of this kind, be they noumena, eternal forms or any “really real” world that lays beneath/behind/before/beyond/whatever we can’t test by definition. I do away with the need to postulate such realms.
You could construct sets where there is no distinction between 0 and 1, but it’s not something we currently find that useful - at least compared to if we do distinguish between 0 and 1, as far as we know so far.
Continuous experience doesn’t distinguish between 0 and 1 because it doesn’t distinguish between anything - it’s continuous: there are no gaps of nothingness in experience. But that’s useless - so we treat it like it’s discrete, where things like 0 and 1 can be distinguished. They don’t have to be, nor do we have to think in terms of sets in the first place - anything goes. It’s only when you want to slow the increase in entropy that your choices become limited and you need to resort to something like conceptions of discrete experience, and distinguishing between 0 and 1. It’s contingent, it’s not necessary that “there’s no set where 1=0”.
Not sure I understood the other things you said, but I hope the above clears something up at least.
I don’t like “1” either.
But I don’t like your wording of “2” - it seems like you’re forcing the word “form” into it to justify the whole “eternal forms” thing.
You aren’t going to come across any disagreement from me in the logic that something can’t come from nothing. My point is that there are more other possibilities than what you offer as “2”, which lends the illusion of a false dilemma.
I would offer some more things to take into account:
i) that the rate of something coming from something before has not always been constant. The time dimension itself may have curved such that the rate of something coming from something else formerly simulated coming from nothing, because the transition was so slow it took next to an eternity. This is compatible with what relativity says about conditions around a singularity of the whole universe at “the big bang”.
ii) causation may not be fundamental to reality, but merely an appearance based on how we currently make sense of reality. I’m far from the first person to question the conventional “timeline” conception of time, where past preceded the present and future will follow - despite nobody ever leaving the present, the past only presenting itself to us “in the present” as a memory, and the future never ever arriving. I’m pretty sure you’ve dismissed this as a static “frozen” reality, which isn’t reflective of how reality appears, but I think you’re bringing over assumptions about the “timeline” conception to come to this conclusion. If we were thinking in terms of the present being a fixed “frame” that flicks through a reel of frames from past to future, like a film, then just that 1 fixed frame would be frozen reality - which is not true. It’s better to think of time moving through the present, rather than the present moving through time - or whatever you need to understand the present as dynamic and “in motion unto itself”, rather than frozen. This conception doesn’t need a beginning or end to a chain in causation, because “time is eternally in the present”.
iii) both of the previous things to take into account only discrete experiences. Continuous experience doesn’t even require any of these assumptions and constructions, experience is one continuousness in itself - no discrete causation fundamental at all. Causation is just one way of dividing it up into something we currently consider useful.
-edit-
Actually I’m not sure the above answers your question, but I don’t want to delete it - so it’s there just in case it does answer something.
You’re talking about “novel things” - that might not mean newly occurring in time, you might mean things that are rearranged to appear differently to how they did before.
If you mean the latter then it’s all the same stuff, just moved and condensed or dispersed “from here rather than there”. If you’re making a clay sculpture, you’re moving matter around through every possible point between how your materials start to how they end up. There’s no point at which they “suddenly” take the form of something specific. It’s all as relatively amorphous as it ever was, just some morphs are more familiar than others. This is a product of your memory noting consistencies in reality, rather than there being any significance in “one form” over some other form. At best, these “eternal forms” are just “common” forms in your memory.
Silluoutte,
See, your just not addressing my argument at all.
When I state that something that’s never existed before means one of two things:
1.) something comes from nothing at all
2.) it’s always existed (the title basically of the thread)
You didn’t address that specific argument.
You only have two options here.
Sit for a moment and truly think about what it means to state that it’s always existed.
Use your experientialism to contemplate this truth, that whatever happens, has always existed, otherwise, it comes necessarily from nothing at all.
What this states is that we are eternal forms projected, that we slowly discover eternal forms, not that we create them.
What’s an example of something that’s never existed before?
Are we talking every unique pine needle on every single pine tree?
Are we talking a new clay sculpture?
What qualifies as novel?
I’ve never experienced not experiencing - to me that’s always existed.
Likewise I’ve never experienced anything that wasn’t experiencing - to me that’s all that’s ever existed.
This will be the same for everyone.
As such, for each experiencer it’s all been continuous with itself and itself alone. Experience has always existed as far as its possible for anyone to say anything has.
It’s not actually been divided into discrete experiences so nothing discrete has been added to this continuity, nor taken away.
Therefore nothing is truly novel.
But I have learned to treat it as discrete experiences - just like everyone else. In its totality, I’ve learned to see it with new distinctions, even though it’s all really the same. “Novelty” is in the way you dissect it/rationalise it. All that’s changed is my perception of the same thing in different ways. Nothing’s coming from anything or left anything, it’s always been something.
That’s what Experientialism says.
So I guess we agree that “it’s always existed”. Only that you’ve added in eternal forms for where the “novel interpretations of the same thing” come from.
I suggest the continuous experience is the beginning of this process and some set of discrete experiences is the end.
It’s complete, without any unfalisifiable “eternal forms”.
Eternal forms are the absence of something coming from nothing at all.
It’s binary.
Think about it:
If it has no precidence in existence, even if something came from something else, it is totally unique without precidence.
Eihther it came from nothing at all (no exact precidence; completely novel)
Or is is an eternal form
It’s binary
Silhouette wrote :
“I’ve always had a problem with these conceptions due to the innate lack of Falsifiability. In Kantian terms, the noumenal world is beyond our ability to directly perceive. Anything of this kind, be they noumena, eternal forms or any “really real” world that lays beneath/behind/before/beyond/whatever we can’t test by definition. I do away with the need to postulate such realms.”
However , doing away with the terms coincidentally, may not do away the requirements implicit in their general understanding, to either connect the original hypo-Thesis, nor the assumtive thesis for a derivitive of partially synthesized( interweaving/variable models of functional learning.
The unitary nature of this type of interphase between necessary and contingent reasoning have not been completely eradicated as structurally synthetic between latent and patent
forms of reasoning.
There is no complete dissociation of the phenominal and the nominal, reversing hypothetical assumptions that preserve categorical absolutes.
That specification may functionally reset the conditions that may exceed Kant’s formative movement toward meaning.
Silhouette , it is just a mention that imply more then general terms can imply.
This irreduceability within the context of absurd reductionism , rests on simple but convincing fallibility , as with Russel and Ayer, and merely within limited specifications.
Maybe that’s right, maybe not. And note even if it is right, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have a universe where 2+2=3, for all we know, it would be just that the set of things in the eternal forms includes options some used, some not, some used this ‘time’, some not. Some used here, but not there. And so on. But all this is just speculative. And any certainty on such issues seems very speculative to me. Our deductions may look peachy, but since they may be based on incomplete understanding, well, we simply don’t know.
But Karpel,
Those are just modalities of logic!
You can easily make a numerical grid where coordinates (2,2) find the number three.
So what you’re really saying is that a universe stupider than ours (that doesn’t understand modalities of logic) may think 2+2=3… as a universal.
I am saying that the rules might be utterly different there and that for all we know such a universe exists, did exist, might in the future exist or could ahve been made by God but God chose to make one with the logic we have and assume is the only one. Just as it seems obvious that Euclidian geometry was the only one that was logical, when in fact it turned out that non-Euclidian geomtries were perfectly logical in our own universe in fact. It has nothing to do with intelligence. What seems absurd often has to do with what we are used to and how things work where we are.
Are you saying that it’s stupid to define any of these quantities differently?
For example, build ordinal progression in the same way we would define “2^(n-1)”, the 1st term is 1, the 2nd is 2, the 3rd is our “4”, but their “3”. Define addition, perhaps, as what term you get to when you progress from the 1st term to the next, 1+1=2, 2+2=3, 3+3=4 etc. - there’s probably a few ways you can do this.
Like learning an intuitive way past any of our traditional understandings of mathematics is hard, such as conducting division in binary, this will only seem unintuitive as a result of having learned our traditional intuitions.
And yet it’s all perfectly logical.
Would such an alternative way of constructing mathematical progressions be stupid? Well you have to have some degree of our intelligence to work using it - what we understand as logarithms are a big help in the example I provided.
But it may in fact be even more intelligent than what we use already, since humans think multiplicatively far more intuitively than we think in terms of addition. This alternative system would match our intuitions with our intellectual understandings.
You could be even more crude, and mess around with the symbols such that 1-5 goes “1,2,4,3,5” or “1,2,↊,3,↋,4,5”, or you could have 2 mean 1.5, you could use the “equal” symbol differently - these all fall within what I offered as the “2nd” requirement for 2+2=4, nevermind the “1st” requirement of discrete experience.
The crude alterations only mess around with the specific symbology for the same quantities that make 2+2=4 with the symbols we use, which is trivial, but I offered the opening example to show a way of messing around with quantification itself. So you don’t have to mess around with the signifiers “2,+,=,4”, to make 2+2=3, you can mess around with how you conceive of the signifieds - the quantities that the symbols represent.
Other possible universes could easily do this.
KT’s example of seeing past Euclidean geometry is a perfect analogy for this. The Euclidean assumption of the metric plane isn’t necessary, it’s just convention. Draw perpendicular lines across a sufficiently curved surface and 5 of them will construct a regular Pentagon instead of a square. With infinite curvature - and we all know how much “the infinite” appeals to you, and the Euclidean construction of a square could form a circle - the square circle exists perfectly logically(!) Personally, I reject the notion of infinite curvature, because tending towards that would be tending towards curving the plane out of existence, but the logic in the construction remains.
Familiarity with messing around with all the assumptions you don’t think you’re missing pretty much opens up a a world of possibilities where literally anything goes “logically”. It’s only on traditional assumptions, or at least non-zero assumptions that logic will necessarily result in one answer only.
I think you’re mixing up existence and essence here:
Existence cannot come from nothing, it has to come from something: your second of your binary options - it’s always existed.
Specific forms of this existence come and go from nothing to something and back to nothing. Forms themselves aren’t beholden to causation, laws of physics, they’re just incidental patterns that change around as cause acts on existence.
Existence is causal: something can’t come from nothing.
Essence is acausal: forms come and go, morph freely from one to another as a superficial evaluation of what causal existence “currently looks like”. They’re a secondary product of valuation arbitrarily contingent on a valuer, not a primary and necessary product of the laws of nature, which are independent of valuation.
You see the distinction?
Existence vs essence.
You guys are arguing just to argue.
The counting numbers are a MODALITY of logic.
A culture that cannot abstract different modalities is stupider than one that can.
And now you are mind reading and poorly. Actually I think it is an important point, thank you very much. So, now I disagree with your argument, but have an added irritation that you choose to attribute incorrect motives to me. A consent violation you could have easily avoided. I think people overestimate deduction and I think this is very important. It is a very good type of reasoning, but I think certainly is so affected by the potential and known biases of being embodied creatures of a specific type in a specific place and time and with the limited potentially skewed perception we have, these are often not proofs at all. I think people run around with incredibly certainly over things that are not certain, and this 1) creates greater conflict and consent violation 2) makes it take longer for people to realize old models and theories are wrong 3) inhibits discussion. So, I am not arguing just to argue. Poor mind reading on your part.
I don’t think this is a relevent point, but since you didn’t integrate it into an argument with any points I made, who knows?
This is a pattern I find with you: you present a ‘proof’. I don’t think it holds. I object to it with specific points. You re-assert your conclusions and do not interact with criticisms. And now you add in ad homs.
I can’t work with that. So, I’ll leave you with your thread.
Karpel,
All you did was list about 4 different modalities of logic … they are not disproof of the well ordered set of counting numbers.
I then went on to clearly state that a culture that cannot abstract the counting numbers is stupider than one that can.
I actually did address all of your points.
I did not do this. Maybe S did.
I did not set out to disprove that.
Which has nothing to do with the points I made.
Nope.
Banned user for reason “A one day ban, to reassess why you are here… perhaps you need a break from the boards?”
» Ecmandu
FYI, in regard to any expectant replies.
Karpel,
You clearly stated that God could make us all not understand the well ordered set of counting numbers as rational. I made the argument that they by definition must be under delusion from God, by explaining that we have different modalities … i answered your question