On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 2:25 AM, Peter Sas <[email protected]> wrote: > > First my apologies to you and Brent for the mix up. I'm new to this > wonderful forum, and the format still disorients me a bit... > > which is why the universe exists in the first place, that is, it is not >> nothing (= ontological difference). >> >> You wrote: That looks like a play with word, which does not mean that >> there is not some truth behind, but you will have to elaborate a lot. >> >> Partly I am thinking of Heidegger here... not I have much respect for him >> as a philosopher, on the contrary... but in the early phase of his career >> he had some nice ideas, such as this one about ontological difference: >> Being (with capital "B") as that which lets beings be is not itself a >> being, it is rather a kind of Nothing which acts like a counter foil to >> beings: we experience beings as existing because we can contrast them with >> the Nothing which is revealed to us through Angst and our >> being-unto-death... >> >> Heidegger's approach to nothing is of course thoroughly >> existentialist-phenomenological... According to me, this means that he >> never really broke away from Kantian subjectivism: beings as phenomena >> remain dependent on the subject's (Dasein's) orientation to the nothingness >> of death... I would rather opt for an objectivist approach to nothing, as >> 'something' that 'exists' independently and prior to human beings (and >> indeed as prior to the universe as a whole). >> >> My reasoning in this regard is very basic. To explain why there is >> something rather than nothing we have to start with nothing, since >> otherwise we end up either in an infinite regress or a vicious circle. That >> is, as long as we start from some primordial being (e.g. God or the >> Platonic realm of eternal truths) as the cause of all other beings, we >> still have to explain why that primordial being existed/exists in the first >> place. And then we have to postulate either a still more primordial being >> (regress) or suppose that the primordial being is self-causing, which seems >> absurd. The only possibility, then, is to start with the concept of nothing >> and see if we can explain being on that basis. >> >> Why is human intuition is drawn to the notion that non-existence is a more acceptable initial state than the existence of something? Non-existence does not lead to existence, so there must be some self-existent thing. This becomes even more obvious when you consider there is objectively no time or change. Time and change exist only for observers embedded within universes. If there is no objective change, then everything that exists has always existed and will always exist. There was no creation and there shall be no destruction. If you believe 1+2 = 3, or 7 is prime, are true before you knew it, true before any human knew it, true before life existed, was true before the big bang, and would be true even if no physical reality existed, this is enough to show why your experience of believing you live in a physical world exists (accepting the computational theory of mind) as Bruno shows in his paper.
Jason > Plotinus too describes the One as a kind of nothing but in my view that's >> because he holds a apophatic theology, where the One transcends our >> conceptual capacities, so we can only conceive it as a nothing whereas in >> fact it is rather the opposite, an ontological plenitude. So in my view, a >> neo-Platonic approach is still not radical enough, its conception of >> nothing is still not the absolute nothing with which we have to start if we >> want to answer Leibniz' question (Heidegger would say: Plotinus is still >> onto-theology, the confusion of Being with a being). >> >> So how to go from the absolute nothing to being? Here my intuition is >> that nothing is a self-negating 'quantity' which as such 'produces' being. >> I know that's terribly vague and even a bit mystical, and I'm struggling to >> make it more precise. I thought I had found one indication for this point >> of view in the idea of the zero-energy universe, where positive and >> negative energy precisely cancel each other out, so that perhaps we can >> describe the origination of the universe as a kind of splitting of 0 into 1 >> and -1 (i.e. into positive and negative energy). But now I've learned from >> the contributions on this forum that the idea of the zero-energy universe >> is much more problematic than figures like Hawking and Krauss make it >> appear. What I also found very congenial is the notion of quantum >> fluctuation, with particle-antipartice pairs popping into existence from >> the fluctuating 'zero'-energy level of the vacuum (I wonder: is the energy >> of the vacuum positive or negative or neither?). But as you also suggested, >> the vacuum is not the absolute nothing since the vacuum is spatial and >> seething with quantum activity. Anyway, I still feel that this splitting of >> the vacuum into particles andd antiparticles fits hand in glove with a >> dialectical approach to nothing as self-negating (for on that account, >> nothing is both itsef and its own antibeing of sorts). But I admit, these >> are just highly speculative intutions. >> >> As for the contradiction inherent in the concept of nothing, this seems >> to be a well-known idea, thought hard to make precise. Carnap of course >> famously argued against Heidegger that his concept of nothing is >> inconsistent. Partly Carnap's reasoning goes as follows: define Nothing as >> N such that if x exists then x is not equal to N, so if N exists (i.e. if N >> = x) then N is not N, hence a contradiction. >> >> Carnap, of course, takes this to show that the concept of nothing is >> nonsensical. But given the fact that we can only answer Leibniz' question >> by starting with nothing, I think we have to see this contradiction as an >> objective reality which explains why there is being at all. >> >> I thought I had also found a way to show the inconsistency of nothing >> through set theory, but that too turns out to be more complicated than I >> expected. The reasoning is quite simple and goes as follows: First consider >> the axiom of extensionality: sets are identical iff they have all their >> elements in common. Then consider the empty set and note that, since it >> doesn't have any elements, it can't have elements in common with itself, so >> it is disjoint with itself. But then from the axiom of extensionality it >> follows that the empty set is not identical with itself! But as it turns >> out, it seems that the axiom of extensionality is formulated in such a way >> that this contradiction cannot arise. Still, the fact that the empty set >> has no elements makes it in my view a very troublesome set with no clear >> identity-conditions. The late philosopher E.J. Lowe argued something >> similar and concluded that set theory should do away with the empty set. I >> wouldn't argue that, however, since I'm quite smitten with the >> set-theoretic derivation of math recursively from the empty set (the Von >> Neumann approach). Perhaps what I am looking for is a kind of >> paraconsistent approach to the empty set, where it is precisely the >> contradiction in the concept of the empty set that will allow us to derive >> math from it. >> >> In this regard I am also intrigued by Frege's definition of the empty set >> as the set of all things that are not self-identical. Though I am not sure >> if from this it follows that the empty set too is not self-identical. After >> all, the set of all cars is not itself a car. On the other hand, if we >> define sets extensionally, and we adopt Frege's definition, than the >> extension of the empty set is not-self-identical, which then seems to imply >> that the set itself is not-self-identical as well. >> >> Of course, if we start with a contradiction, then ex falso sequitur >> quodlibet and the entire system will be vitiated. Unless we find a way to >> somehow contain the contradiction of the empty set (or nothing). My >> intuition here is that dialectics may be of use here. It seems clear to me >> that we can say: since nothing is inconsistent, and since being is the >> negation of nothing, being must be consistent. >> >> I wish I could develop such ideas in a more formal fashion. Perhaps >> looking into paraconsistent set theory might be of use. If you have any >> suggestions I would be very much obliged. I am not in any way connected to >> a university. I got a PhD in philosophy in 2000, but I did not have an >> academic career. So forums like this one are the only means I have for >> discussing these things with others and I am sincerely grateful for that! >> >> Also thanks for you paper. I will certainly read it (i.e. I will attempt >> to read it, since math and formal logic are not my forte, unfortunately). >> The very idea of a computational approach to neo-platonism certainly seems >> very original. By the way, I am not such a philosopher who is averse to a >> scientific approach, quite the contrary, as you may have guessed already. I >> do think however that presupposing a mathematical reality from which >> physical somehow derives is still not enough to answer Leibniz' question, >> for why then is there the mathematical reality to begin with? We can say >> logic and math are timelessly true, but I think we still want to know why >> that is so. >> > This is one thing that can't be explained. It is like asking why is 7 prime? Because no natural numbers besides 1 and 7 evenly divide it. Why not? Well because neither 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or any number greater than 7 evenly divides it. Why not? That's simply how it is. Personally, I find it very satisfying that a TOE can ultimately have such an intuitive and straight-forward answer to why it is this way and has to be. It's hard to deny 1 != 0. Jason > Moreover: there is also a certain subjectivity involved here, since WE >> think they are timeless because WE cannot imagine a situation in which >> logic and math were not true, but then the timelessness is predicated on >> our cognitive limitations, which does not show that math and logic are in >> themselves timelessly true. >> >> Peter >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
