If anyone is interested, I think some of the ideas
at my website, www.geocities.com/roger846, apply to
the current discussion. Briefly, the ideas entail:
o Something exists because it is completely defined.
That is, you know exactly what's contained in that
thing. This applies to material things outside the
mind as well as to ideas and concepts within the mind.
For instance, a book exists because you know what's
contained within it (cover, pages, etc.). The concept
"love" exists in someone's mind because that person
knows what kinds of things are contained within the
concept.
o The complete definition of something is the same
thing as an edge or boundary. This edge or boundary
gives the thing substance or what we call "existence".
o What we have traditionally called "non-existence" or
the lack of all matter, energy, volume,
ideas/concepts, etc. is completely defined. That is,
there's nothing missing and nothing somewhere else,
and you know exactly what's there-nothing at all.
Because it's completely defined, what we've
traditionally thought of as "non-existence" can also
be said to exist. In other words, when seen from a
different perspective than usual, "non-existence" and
"existence" are really just the same thing.
Another way of coming to this conclusion is as
follows:
When thinking about the question "why is there
something rather than nothing?", two choices are:
A. "Something" has always been here.
B. "Something" has not always been here.
Even though choice A is possible, it doesn't provide
any explanation so
let's go with choice B and see where it leads. If
"something" hasn't always
been here, then "nothing" must have been here before
it. If "nothing" were
here, there would be no mechanism in "nothing" to
change this "nothing" into
"something". Yet, we accept that "something" is
here now. So, the only
possible choice is that "nothing" and "something"
are one and the same
thing.
Thanks.
Roger
--- Youness Ayaita <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> No(-)Justification Justifies The Everything Ensemble
> Youness Ayaita
>
>
>
> In this message, I present my "no-justification" of
> the hypothesis
> that everything exists. The no-justification argues
> that no
> justification at all is needed to accept the
> hypothesis. This provides
> a new and very satisfying approach to the Everything
> ensemble.
>
>
>
> 1 Hitherto proposed justifications
>
> In this first section I give a brief overview of
> some existing
> justifications for the Everything ensemble. The
> reader familiar with
> the topic may skip this section.
>
> Several thinkers have come independently to the
> hypothesis that---in
> some sense or another---everything exists. The
> justifications they
> have found in favor of this hypothesis vary as do
> their intellectual
> backgrounds (philosophy, computer science,
> mathematics or physics).
> When I myself developed the hypothesis, I found
> three
> justifications which I call respectively the
> 'metaphysical approach',
> the 'generalized Copernican principle' and the
> 'no-justification'. The
> main justifications supported by contributors to the
> everything-list
> are the 'zero information principle' and
> 'arithmetical realism' (also
> called 'mathematical Platonism'). Another
> justification is due to the
> analytic philosopher David Lewis:
>
> "Why believe in a plurality of worlds?---Because the
> hypothesis is
> serviceable, and that is a reason to think it is
> true."
>
> For most philosophers Lewis's justification was not
> convincing. Much
> more attractive to many thinkers is arithmetical
> realism, assuming the
> objective existence of all mathematical objects. The
> zero information
> principle bases upon the observation that the
> Everything has no
> information content. Russell Standish writes:
>
> "There is a mathematical equivalence between the
> Everything, as
> represented by this collection of all possible
> descriptions and
> Nothing, a state of no information."
>
> This justification is impressive since it shows that
> Everything is---
> in some sense---not more than Nothing. It thus
> provides a striking
> argument against the critics' objection that
> supporters of the
> Everything ensemble postulate too much additional
> ontology.
>
> As a last example, I mention the generalized
> Copernican principle. The
> idea is to give up the categorical difference
> between our world and
> all other possible worlds: Everything is equally
> real.
>
>
>
> 2 Remarks on new fundamental theories
>
> Before starting to explain my no-justification of
> the Everything
> ensemble, I want to summarize some important
> statements in advance
> which concern all new fundamental theories. Taking
> seriously the
> approach given by the no-justification, it will turn
> out that the term
> "Everything exists" is logically meaningless.
> Nonetheless I'll still
> use the term without questioning its outstanding
> significance. The
> only thing that changes is the term's role within
> our thinking. It
> will no longer be an integral part of the
> fundamental theory, but
> merely a link from the fundamental theory to our
> 'everyday theory'.
>
> As a typical example of such a relation may serve
> Einstein's theory of
> general relativity. The concept of mass---or to be
> more precise, the
> energy-momentum tensor---is no integral part of
> general relativity, it
> is replaced by the curvature of spacetime.
> Einstein's famous field
> equations that relate the curvature of spacetime to
> the energy-
> momentum tensor, are thus meaningless insofar as
> they only 'define'
> the energy-momentum tensor. In principle, we could
> abandon the concept
> of mass and energy and use the curvature tensor
> instead. So, would the
> theory of general relativity lose anything if we
> removed Enstein's
> field equations? The answer to this question is
> twofold. As a
> mathematical theory, general relativity would remain
> complete and as
> rich as it is today. But as a physical theory it
> would lose its
> meaning, i.e. it would lose its explanatory and
> predictive power. This
> is because a mathematical theory (in the case of
> general relativity:
> Spacetime is a smooth 4-manifold with a metric
> tensor and such and
> such properties) does not give a physical
> interpretation by itself.
> The term "physical interpretation" means that we
> have a procedure how
> to interpret elements of the theory as elements of
> our everyday
> theory. A physical interpretation serves as
> translation from the
> theory's mathematical language to our concrete
> everyday language.
>
> Einstein's field equations link general relativity
> (with the curvature
> of spacetime) to special relativity (with the
> energy-momentum tensor)
> which is itself linked to Newtonian mechanics (with
> the usual concept
> of mass and Euclidian space). Newtonian mechanics is
> understood in the
> everyday theory. We see from this that Einstein's
> field equations are
> part of the physical interpretation in the sense
> described above.
>
> The everyday theory, of course, is only a vague
> concept that allows us
> to exchange information about events in the world
> that surrounds us.
> Though, it is not clearly defined.
>
>
>
> 3 No-justification
>
> The no-justification is the most satisfying
> justification for the
> Everything ensemble I know. I even think that a more
> satisfying
> justification is impossible in principle. So what is
> it about? The
> crucial point is to try to get to the bottom of our
> understanding of
> 'existence'. In our everyday theory we use
> 'existence' as a property:
> Some things 'exist', whereas other (imaginable)
> things don't. The
> origin of this practice lies in very pragmatic
> reasons. It makes sense
> to separate things that are 'accessible in
> principle' from things that
> are not. This relation between 'us' and 'things
> which are accessible
> in principle for us' was falsely understood as an
> objective property
> of those things. I feel Wittgenstein's hands
> slapping on my back when
> I tell you that 'existence' is nothing else than a
> linguistic
> confusion. Strictly speaking, the concept of
> 'existence' doesn't make
> sense. I encourage you to abandon it. If we take the
> right point of
> view, the problem of having to find a "theory of
> everything" doesn't
>
=== message truncated ===
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