Science topics: PhilosophyMetaphysics
Science topic
Metaphysics - Science topic
Metaphysics are for discussion on the fundamental nature of the world and physical processes.
Questions related to Metaphysics
Background Summary:
The relationship between science and spirituality has long been a subject of debate, often framed as a dichotomy—science grounded in empirical evidence and logical reasoning, and spirituality rooted in faith, intuition, and transcendence. Historically, the two have been seen as separate, with science focusing on the material world and spirituality addressing the metaphysical. However, recent advancements in various fields of science, particularly quantum physics, neuroscience, and cosmology, have begun to blur the lines between these traditionally distinct realms.
As science continues to uncover the mysteries of consciousness, the nature of reality, and the origins of the universe, new questions arise: Can spirituality, which encompasses the search for meaning and the experience of the divine, be reconciled with scientific inquiry? Can modern science, in its pursuit of understanding the fundamental laws of nature, leave room for concepts such as God, purpose, and interconnectedness?
Furthermore, many contemporary thinkers and scientists argue that spirituality could be incorporated into modern scientific frameworks. Practices like meditation, mindfulness, and consciousness studies have already demonstrated measurable impacts on human health and cognition. The exploration of how spiritual experiences can be understood and validated within scientific paradigms opens exciting opportunities for interdisciplinary research.
Please evaluate the approach to the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis based on the study of the oscillations of the metaphysical pendulum. For a substantive conversation, I suggest you look at the formula (3.22) in the
Preprint Chaotic dynamics of an electron
To exactly quantify the afterlife, first we must confirm, then chart, the probable multiverse through engineering. Then we must engineer a machine to find where one’s individuality goes throughout the multiverse, after death in this universe.
Life is a unique journey toward self-discovery, world awareness, transcendental quests, and universal dreams and struggles. With its metaphysical depth and chaotic yet harmonious nature, human existence is characterized as an exceptional gift, a layered mystery, a cosmic expression of joy and sorrow. Defining the essence of life is just a wave in the boundless sea of subsistence: It is an intrinsic necessity to pursue the meaning of life, to find the essence of being, and to follow the path that leads to achieving it.
Many philosophers and renowned thinkers have tried to decode the meaning of life, enriching metaphysical perceptions of essence, challenging cognitive beliefs, and fostering deep ideas. According to Aristotle, the meaning of life is expressed through happiness, while Immanuel Kant believed that happiness comes from moral duty and the pursuit of the greater good. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson presented his beliefs about the meaning of life through these words:
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
In your perspective, what is the meaning of life?
Dear Amalya Sukiasyan
The meaning of life is that what exists (can be defined as existing) should be in balance with its surroundings.
For further explanation, see the book' AZ ESZME'
Regards,
Laszlo
RESPECTFULLY, pan-dualism is more plausible than pan-deism. All entities either are unique, or too different for perfect prediction. Plus, humans may be bound by some rules(genetics, environment, circumstances, etc.) but, without the fundamental choice to focus on life, human reason would be impossible. Plus, humans can lose all their cells yet survive and retain their individual identities. So, at least humans have some immaterial tracker(maybe souls). Pan-deism depends on the unlikely premise that a creator destroyed itself(thus, all existence are dubiously the creator’s debris). We don’t know who created us or how. Thus, pan-dualism has the most evidence, while making the least assumptions.
The demarcation between philosophy and science is defined by the validation of ideas through experimentation. However, what happens when loopholes are created that allow unsubstantiated thoughts to re-enter science under the guise of scientific rigor? This, in fact, was achieved by scientists like Einstein and has since been embraced by the scientific community. Below are three specific examples of such loopholes. I invite you to comment on them:
- Thought Experiment: Einstein reintroduced a core philosophical concept by renaming it, substituting real experimentation with hypothetical scenarios. This approach has significantly altered the scientific landscape.
- Thought Instrument: Einstein also introduced the idea of the "thought instrument," exemplified by constructs like the "light clock" and the "graphene-thick windowless laboratory (GTWL)," to support his thought experiments.
- Handicapped Experimentation: The most striking loophole was the deliberate exclusion of key observations in experiments, which allowed for experimentation within the confines of the GTWL. This last loophole is the hardest to detect but becomes obvious once revealed. Imagine being given two identical bottles containing two transparent liquids. You're told that no experiment can differentiate between the two liquids. However, when informed that one smells like white vinegar and the other does not, you're instructed not to use your sense of smell in the experiment. This is similar to the rationale given to justify the "equivalence principle" and, subsequently, general relativity.
For more on the intersection of religion, philosophy, and science, please refer to the attached presentation materials.
Presentation God: Valid Scientific Conclusion
Experimentally, observationally, and observational-theoretically, some of the generalizations of any physical ontology of cosmology may, strictly speaking, be non-verifiable and non-falsifiable.
But the empirical method of the sciences is continuous with the theoretical. Both, together, form part of "reason". Note also this: Reason is not equivalent to logic. There are many sorts of logic. Reason is the general set, and the various logics are sub-sets or members.
From this viewpoint, would you admit that there seems to be the possibility of obtaining SOME REASON from the suggestion that a PHYSICAL ONTOLOGY OF THE REASON WITHIN THE COSMOS be constructed? I CALL THIS REASON UNIVERSAL CAUSALITY.
I have developed an MMM (maximal-medial-minimal) method, where the approachable values are zero, finite, and infinite -- all others being strictly of the realm of the positive sciences. Zero, finitude, and infinity may be available in the positive sciences. But in the case of zero and infinity, the attitude is that of limiting values.
Finitude is a general term. In the positive sciences there must be specific values, not generally finite values!
Of course, we do not know of infinite values in the strictest sense of the term. But on the same count we do not also know zero value except as the absence of WHAT WE CONSIDER at a given instance.
I feel that a sort of "axiomatization" is perhaps possible -- at least as a physical ontology of the cosmos, PROVIDED UNIVERSAL CAUSALITY IS DERIVABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE CONCEPT OF EXISTENCE (TO BE).
SEE:
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
In the history of natural science, the ruling class had the power, but the underdog (the ruled) had the truth. This contradiction pushed science forward. Pre-quantum natural science and even now, had/have no clear ideas about the ontological question of how the universe came to be. Mythology, Theology and Speculations depended on a "First Cause" of creation by God in the finite past. In other words, Metaphysics depending on causality, substituted for science; but this Metaphysics could not even imagine in its wildest dream, the quantum nature of objective reality, before it was discovered – a revolutionary development in natural science like never before! Only G.W.F Hegel through his dialectical philosophy of space-time-matter-motion in a very obscure and highly speculative way anticipated the quantum phenomena of objective reality. Now that the quantum reality is being established through practice from the microcosm to the macrocosm of the Infinite, Eternal and Ever-changing universe; can Metaphysics and the old established order survive much longer?
DIALECTICS NOT METAPHYSICS OF NATURE: FROM THE QUANTUM TO THE COSMIC :
" The Infinite - As a Hegelian Philosophical Category and Its Implication for Modern Theoretical Natural Science":
The Philosophy of Space-Time: Whence Cometh Matter and Motion? JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN PHYSICS, 12(2), 4270–4277. https://doi.org/10.24297/jap.v12i2.163
"Ambartsumian, Arp and the Breeding Galaxies" : http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V12NO2PDF/V12N2MAL.pdf
In a criticism of a novel I need to expound on heroic values as they are distinct form everyday life values. From another angle heroic terms and values stand at odds with this-worldy values of what can be called materialism. In this sense they are similar to a kind of spiritualism in which the metaphysics of meaning distances itself from the contingency of life as such. I would be more than happy if you mention any point in this respect!
maybe in the afterlife I've failed at... Uniqueness may be the arche...
Everyone is special:
We may only know everything is unique or too different for perfect prediction. Thus, the basis of metaphysical facts is the uniqueness of each entity. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381651064_Metaphysics_of_Specifics
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Karl Popper". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 May. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Popper. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Meinwald, Constance C.. "Plato". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 May. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Plato. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Kenny, Anthony J.P. and Amadio, Anselm H.. "Aristotle". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 May. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle. Accessed 23 June 2024.
All good derives from bad. Disincentives are everything. Deduction is more rigorous than induction.
I don't know.
1)
Warren C. Gibson. “Modern Physics versus Objectivism.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, 2013, pp. 140–59. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5325/jaynrandstud.13.2.0140. Accessed 14 June 2024.
2)
The simulation theory is NOT parsimonious because at least partial free will is self-evident. Reason would not exist without the fundamental choice to focus on life. Even animals probably make decisions thus, have souls.
My best strategy is to make my body of work on metaphysics so big and rigorous that, people will ponder "how would he have done this without a doctorate?"
1)
Data Metaphysics BA
2)
Data Metaphysics MA
3)
4)
Data Metaphysics PHD
5)
1)No one can predict the future completely accurately.
2)So, all beings probably have a unique enough form.
3)Plus, the most fundamental essence of reality is unknown.
4)Thus, upon death, each being probably doesn't return.
Could anyone define and explain the concept 'virtual' in Quantum Physics, Cosmology, Metaphysics, and Artificial Intelligence? Or, do such definitions exist?
Statistical Causality: In my opinion, the scientific, analytic-philosophical and scientific-philosophical concepts of causation and “causal explanation” (20thcentury) follow one type of admixture or other of the above two. Here follow the dire – science-debilitating – consequence of such an attitude of ignominy of Causality in science and philosophy. I shall exemplify this by critiquing the physical and cosmological turn in statistical causality and its consequences.
The first mistake that statistical causalists make is the confusion between the epistemic and the metaphysical, because they (just like all of us, most scientists and philosophers) they make us to think that, what we discover is the whole reality about whatever object is under inquiry at that time, merely and directly because (1) our causal discovery or non-discovery of something specific is verified experimentally and experimental-theoretically, (2) the statistical method yields the “scientific” truths just like the “experimental” method does, (3) “scientific” truth is the only possible mode of truths, and (4) in most cases in most sciences we have only the statistical method to fall back upon.
The technological economic, and daily-life orientation of truth is to blame. Not merely are scientists but also technologists, politicians, and the medical industry who refuse to recognize the problem. The above is one of the most terribly unassuming fallacies that humankind has got trapped in. I have mentioned it earlier as the worst epistemological mistake of humanity. If the experimentally based method of statistical reasoning concerning causation in the sciences concludes that there is causation at some spots in existent physical processes and there is no causation at some other spots, a rationally justified objection is as follows.
A mode of thinking, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and science that can at least attempt to transcend this problem by assuming the utmost importance to the fundamental Categories and truths is yet to emerge. That alone can annihilate the politically and economically religious and scientific use of truths and Nature in Asia, Africa, the Americas, Eastern Europe, and most parts of western Europe. This alone will change the power-political scenario in the world. This may ultimately change humanity into a democratically peaceful place to continue to exist. All other sorts of attempts will be quick-fix solutions, but short-lived, and destructive.
The statistician, statistical physicist, and statistical causalist have the right only to claim that at some spots in physical processes specific kinds of causation may be discovered and at some other spots they are not able to fix or determine the existence of causation at all. This does not mean that their effort was to discover all possible sorts of causation in their sample.
Now, converting this indecision into not admitting Universal Causality and into the claim that there are some spots in physical nature where there is no causation is absolutely unwarranted, because the scientist here is not trying to nor is capable of discovering all sorts of causation within the field of inquiry, and instead, only some kinds of it. Therefore, the epistemically based and oriented conclusion of discovery of some causes cannot be converted into a metaphysically based and oriented conclusion, that is, a conclusion that treats of the existent processes as being causal.
A metaphysical conclusion saying that the statistically attained state of non-attainment of all sorts of causes is the nature of all existents is unacceptable from a rational viewpoint, however great and appealing the empirical appeal exerted by such scientists is. I agree that there have been great empirical discoveries and theoretical edifices where only and merely statistically characterized methods have been used.
This is merely because the statistical inquiry in such sciences is for some specific kinds of causes – not for all possible sorts of causes that there can be in the whole system of existent processual objects under consideration! It is beyond their field of study to ask after the causal or non-causal nature of all that exist.
Does that mean that they must now reach their hands in fields where they cannot reach by their own choice and make mysterious, mystery-mongering, and irrational statements about the already pre-scientifically Universal-Causal characteristic of Reality-in-total, or call all theories of Causality as mechanistic?
All their arguments in favour of the above-said position of ignominy of the pre-scientifically metaphysical (physical-ontological) concept of Universal Causality would finally imply at least that the creation of a cosmos and even the normal processual events in any part of the cosmos will then have to be a statistical, stochastic, probabilistic process. That is, if creation, or for that matter any event in the cosmos, has happened once, it could have happened many times, and it would happen many more times in the future.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
Linguistic analytic philosophy seems to be the philosophy of the day -- represented more than 60% or 70% of academic philosophers in some or other manner. What Frege, Wittgenstein, etc. have said do contain a lot of truth, but should their claims and critiques be the broadest of truths? An example: Later Wittgenstein's insistence that very use of language is the working definition of language. Can we not say this of many other things?
"Motion" is to be found in everything. And why do these philosophers not "use", for example, the notion of "motion" as the fundamental instrument of analysis of everything?
"Interpretation" is yet another concept that may be used in order to analyze everything, and why not? In short, merely because the use-theory of language is useful, we cannot use this theory to analyze everything! But why this addiction in the minds of analytic thinkers with language?
I have mentioned one inconsistency of linguistic philosophy here. In the course of our discussion many more will emerge. I would myself contribute some more.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
I believe that it is common knowledge that mathematics and its applications cannot directly prove Causality. What are the bases of the problem of incompatibility of physical causality with mathematics and its applications in the sciences and in philosophy?
The main but very general explanation could be that mathematics and mathematical explanations are not directly about the world, but are applicable to the world to a great extent.
Hence, mathematical explanations can at the most only show the general ways of movement of the processes and not demonstrate whether the ways of the cosmos are by causation, what the internal constitution of every part of it is, etc. Even when some very minute physical process is mathematized, the results are general, and not specific of the details of the internal constitution of that process.
No science and philosophy can start without admitting that the cosmos exists. If it exists, it is not nothing, not vacuum. Non-vacuous existence means that the existents are non-vacuously extended. This means that they have parts. Every part has parts too, ad libitum, because each part is extended and non-infinitesimal. Hence, each part is relatively discrete, not mathematically discrete.
None of the parts of any physical existent is an infinitesimal. They can be near-infinitesimal. This character of existents is Extension, a Category directly implied by the To Be of Reality-in-total.
Similarly, any extended being’s parts -- however near-infinitesimal -- are active, moving. This implies that every part has so (finite) impact on some others, not on infinite others. This character of existents is Change.
No other implication of To Be is so primary as these two (Extension-Change) and directly derivable from To Be. Hence, they are exhaustive of To Be.
Existence in Extension-Change is what we call Causality. If anything is existent, it is causal – hence Universal Causality is the trans-scientific and physical-ontological Law of all existents.
By the very concept of finite Extension-Change-wise existence, it becomes clear that no finite space-time is absolutely dense with existents. Hence, existents cannot be mathematically continuous. Since there is continuous (but finite and not discrete) change (transfer of impact), no existent can be mathematically absolutely continuous or discrete in its parts or in connection with others.
Can logic show the necessity of all existents as being causal? We have already discussed how, ontologically, the very concept of To Be implies Extension-Change and thus also Universal Causality.
WHAT ABOUT THE ABILITY OR NOT OF LOGIC TO CONCLUDE TO UNIVERSAL CAUSALITY?
In my argument above and elsewhere showing Extension-Change as the very exhaustive meaning of To Be, I have used mostly only the first principles of ordinary logic, namely, Identity, Non-contradiction, and Excluded Middle, and then argued that Extension-Change-wise existence is nothing but Universal Causality, if everything existing is non-vacuous in existence.
For example, does everything exist or not? If yes, let us call it non-vacuous existence. Hence, Extension as the first major implication of To Be. Non-vacuous means extended, because if not extended, the existent is vacuous. If extended, everything has parts.
The point of addition now has been Change, which makes the description physical. It is, so to say, from experience. Thereafter I move to the meaning of Change basically as motion or impact.
Naturally, everything in Extension must effect impacts. Everything has further parts. Hence, by implication from Change, everything causes changes by impacts. Thus, we conclude that Extension-Change-wise existence is Universal Causality. It is thus natural to claim that this is a pre-scientific Law of Existence.
In such foundational questions like To Be and its implications, we need to use the first principles of logic, because these are the foundational notions of all science and no other derivative logical procedure comes in as handy. In short, logic with its fundamental principles can help derive Universal Causality. Thus, Causality is more primary to experience than the primitive notions of mathematics.
Extension-Change, Universal Causality derived by their amalgamation, are the most fundamental Metaphysical, Physical-ontological, Categories. Since these are the direction exhaustive implications of To Be, all philosophy and science are based on these.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
EPISTEMOLOGY OF EVER PUSHING THE DEFINITIONS
OF SYSTEMIC CATEGORIES AND AXIOMS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
We discuss here the continuous and never-ending dimensionality of truth in philosophy, science, philosophical cosmology etc. (in my context, also in Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology – CCG). The present work on a new philosophical cosmology is based on general-ontologically validated epistemological truth-probabilism, which spells out the human tendency to articulate general- and physical-ontological foundations (axiomatic Categorial Laws of metaphysics) that will never be fixed forever, will be ever-better defined, and are therefore clearly and continuously dimensional concepts in the inexhaustible continuation of the very dimension of each of the notions and principles under consideration.
Theoretical foundations that can follow such continuous dimensionality, together, in their implications, indicate not our possession of any truth in its alleged correspondence to the totality of all processes (Reality-in-total) ontologically committed to. They clearly indicate that progress is being made in adequately capturing, or corresponding to, the ideal continuous dimension of what are being sought in human intellectual, technological, and cultural accomplishments – thanks to the logical, epistemological, and ontological implications of Kurt Gödel’s mathematical and logical achievements. [For the achievements of Gödel, see Torkel Franzén 2004: 1-11; see also Richard Tieszen 2011. For a detailed cosmological, epistemological, and ontological treatment of it, see my book, Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 2015, and Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 2018.][1]
Progress is being made not merely in the sciences, the arts, human institutions, etc. Progress is concretely taking place in philosophy too. The cumulative effect of progress in philosophy is not so easily visible as in the case of many other disciplines, because philosophy is to some extent philosopher-based and system-based.
The problem of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem stems from the incompleteness of systems that build themselves up with consistency from primitive notions and axioms: “So every formal system of arithmetic cannot derive the assertion of its own consistency, provided that it is consistent.” [Joseph Vidal-Rosset 2006: 56] But the reason for the innate inconsistency is the natural rigidity in the definitions of the primitive notions (Categories) and axioms. Such rigidity stems from the finitely symbolic nature of representations derived from the denotative function of denotatively defined universals / concepts.
Here the system does not sufficiently recognize connotative universals in consciousness, which are the ideal reflections of the ontological universalities / commonalities in the processes being studied. In that case, the issue stems from still deeper realms: the ever-abiding dubitability of any sort of denotative definitions of primitive notions and axioms from which systems start off. This is true of all sciences. That is, we need great flexibility in the definitions of primitive notions and axioms. This flexibility is what I have called “pushing categories and axioms”. In which case, why not consider all sciences philosophies as part of one generalized science facilitating flexibility?
I do not suggest that the general patterns in human thought or philosophy hold within themselves realizations merely of the implications of Gödel’s theorems [Torkel Franzén 2005: 77ff, 137ff] without the possibility of betterment of theories and systems. Truth can be conceived and defined in any rigorous axiomatic system, where foundational incompleteness will be systemically built in clearly from the possibility, after Gödel, of improvement of completeness if the system can follow the method of indefinitely pushing back the ontological and logical limits of definitions of both (1) axioms and sub-axioms as such into more fundamental ones or more adequate definitions of the same axioms, and (2) primitive notions’ meanings by reason of their definitions. I shall call this solution the method of “pushing Categories and axioms” into more fundamental realms in their definitions. This is the epistemological-methodological foundation of systemic science, namely, the science of all sciences.
This manner of procedure is the most fundamental epistemological ingredient of progress in systems, and this is what happens in history when systems are overhauled or overwhelmed in parts or as wholes. Without such pushing the definitional limits of the basic Categories (primitive notions, metaphysical Laws) and the axioms already created in any system, there is no foundation-building in systems of any kind, especially after we have proofs for this necessity in the logical, epistemological, and ontological implications of the work of Gödel.
This fact will (1) positively relativize the concept of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific truth and (2) negatively highlight human intellectual, technological, cultural, political, and religious institutions’ tendency to fossilize truths. Not relativistic truth-probabilism but clear, adequate, and applicable systemism with ever higher truth-probabilities is to be the foundation of all human thought including mathematics and logic. This is the justification for the creation of the systemic, axiomatic foundations of the sciences of all sciences. This would also satisfy postmodern philosophies with their Socratic effect upon philosophies and sciences and permit philosophy to find surer but ever more flexible paths.
[1] I define: Logic is the science of the best intersubjectively rational consequence of ever higher truth-probability in statements. Epistemology is the science of justifications for the fact and manner of achieving rationally explicable consequence, in a spirally broadening and deepening manner, serving to achieve ever better approximations of the epistemological ideal of Reality-in-general. (Einaic) Ontology is the rationally consequent science of the totality of existents, its parts, and their sine qua nons in terms of the To Be (Einai) of Reality-in-total and/or the to be (einai) of its parts (reality-in-particular), serving to achieve ever better approximations of the epistemological ideal of Reality-in-total.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
CRITERIA TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN
VIRTUALS AND EXISTENTS IN SCIENCE
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph. D., Dr. phil.
Existents are in Extension (each having a finite number of finite-content parts) and in Change (existents, which are always with parts, possessing parts which always exert finite impacts on others, inclusive of exertion of finite impacts on some parts within). Can an existence without parts and exertion of impacts be thought of? Anything that is not in Extension-Change is non-existent.
The Extension-Change kind of existence is what we call Causation, and therefore, every existent is a causal Process in all parts. This is nothing but the Universal Law of Causality. That is, no more do we need to prove causation scientifically. This Law is a pre-scientific and hence physical-ontological Law, meant also for biological existents.
No quantum physics, statistical physics, or quantum cosmology can now declare that certain processes in nature are non-causal or acausal, after having admitted that these processes are in existence!
That is, existents at any level of formation are fully physical, possess at least a minimum of causal connection with others in its environment, are not merely virtual (nor fully modular / non-local / non-emergent / self-emergent / sui generis in a totally isolated manner). Therefore, any existent must have causal connections with its finitely reachable environment and within its inner parts.
Physical-ontologically real generalities must be about, or pertinent to, existents in groups, i.e., as parts of a type / natural kind. These generalities are not existents, but pure ontological universals in natural kinds.
Space and time are just the measurement-based epistemic notions or versions of the more generally physical-ontological Extension and Change respectively. The latter two are generalities of all existent processes, because nothing can exist without these two Categories.
Hence, space and time are not physical-ontological, not real about, not pertinent to, existents. In short, physical science working only on measuremental space-time cannot verify newly discovered energy wavicles and matter particles by use of the physical “properties” they are ascribed to. The reasons are the following.
We can speak not merely of existents but also about their “qualities / universals” and about non-existent “beings” and “properties”. All of them are denotables. Thus, a denotable has reference to something that either (1) has a physical body (physically existent processes), or (2) is inherent in groups of physical processes but are not themselves a physical body (pure universal qualities of all description), or (3) is non-real, non-existent, and hence just a mere notion (e.g., a non-physical possible world with wings, or one with all characteristics – i.e., Extension and Change – absolutely different from the existent physical world).
Denotables of type (1) belong to existent realities, namely, physical processes. They are of matter-energy in content, because Extension-Change determine them to be so. To denotables of type (1) belong also theoretically necessary realities, which are composed theoretically of methodical procedures using properties of existents, which, as a rule, (a) may be proved to be existing (i.e., existent unobservables) or (b) may not be proved to be existing (non-existent unobservables, which are just virtual objects) but are necessary for theory (e.g., potential energy).
To type (2) belong those universals that are never proved to exist but belong to all existents of a group as the general qualities of the members. These are termed ontological universals. The denotables of (1b) are the sub-types that are either fully virtual or partially virtual but are necessary for theory. Both are theoretically useful, but are often mistaken as being existents. Denotables of type (3) are nothing, vacuous. These are pure imaginations without any success in being proved to be in existence.
The difference between non-existent, real, virtual, and existent denotables is this:
Non-existents have no real properties, and generate no ontological commitment to existence via Extension and Change. Real virtuals have the properties that theoretically belong to the denotables that are lacunae in theory, but do not have the Categorial characteristics, namely, Extension and Change. Existent denotables (a) have these Categories (characteristics), (b) generate ontological commitment to existence, and (c) possess also properties that are conglomerations of many ontological universals. All ontological universals are under obedience to Extension and Change.
Hence, virtuals are versions of reality different from those that have been proved as actual existents. They are called in general as unobservables. Some of them are non-existent. When they are proved to exist, they become observables and partial observables, and are removed from membership in virtuals. Some partial observables may yet be considered as not yet proved to be existent. They happen further to be called unobservable virtuals. Some of them do not at all get the status of existent observables or existent partial observables. They belong to group of purely vacuous notions (3) above.
Theories yield unobservables (electrons, neutrinos, gravitons, Higgs boson, vacuum energy, dark energy, spinors, strings, superstrings …). They may be proved to exist, involving detectable properties.
Note that properties are not physical-ontological (metaphysical) characteristics, which latter I call ontological universals, the two most important of which are the Categories: Extension-Change. Instead of being ontological universals, properties are concatenations of ontological universals.
Virtual unobservables fill the lacunae in theoretical explanations, and most of them do not get proved as existent. Nevertheless, they will continue to be useful virtual worlds for theory from the viewpoint of explanation in a state of affairs where there are no ways of explanation using existent unobservables.
As is clear now, the tool to discover new unobservables is not physical properties of which physical and social sciences speak a lot, but instead, the physical-ontological Categories of Extension and Change.
Mere virtuals are non-existent as such, but are taken as solutions to the lacunae in rational imagination. The sciences and many philosophies of the sciences seem not to differentiate between their denotables in the above manner.
I have spoken of universals here, which may fall in distaste for the minds of physicists, scientists of other disciplines, and even for some philosophers. Please note that I have spoken only of the generalities that we are used to speak of regarding existent types of things. I have not brought out here all my theory about kinds of universals.
My claim in the present discussion is only that properties are also just physical virtuals, if we have the unobservables (say, vacuum energy, dark energy, etc.) behind them not fully steeped in physical existence in terms of EXTENSION and CHANGE through experimentally acceptable proofs of existence.
Do we have a science that has succeeded to accept this challenge? Can the scientists of the future accept these criteria for their discoveries?
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
SCIENTIFIC METAPHYSICAL CATEGORIES
BEYOND HEIDEGGER
ENHANCING PHYSICS
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph. D., Dr. phil.
1. Introduction beyond Heidegger
I begin my cosmologically metaphysical critique of the foundations of Heidegger’s work, with a statement of concern. Anyone who attempts to read this work without first reading my arguments in the book, Physics without Metaphysics?, (1) without being in favour of a new science-compatible metaphysics and concept of To Be, and (2) without a critical attitude to Heidegger – is liable to misunderstand my arguments here as misinformed, denigrative, or even trivial. But I do this critique in search of very general means of constructing a metaphysics capable of realising constant guidance and enhancement to scientific practice.
Contemporary mathematics, physics, cosmology, biology, and the human sciences have a shape after undergoing so much growth that we cannot think philosophically without admitting the existence (termed “To Be”) of all that exist, the cosmos and its parts. The general concept of existence is always as “something-s” that are processually out there, however far-fetched our concepts of the various parts of or of the whole cosmos are. “The existence of the totality (Reality-in-total) as the whole something whatever” and “particular existence in the minimally acceptable state of being something/s whatever that is not the whole totality” are absolutely trans-subjective and thus objectual presuppositions behind all thought.
Today we do not have to theoretically moot any idea of non-existence of the cosmos and its parts as whatever they are. This is self-evident. That is, basing philosophical thinking – of the very nature of the existence-wise metaphysical presuppositions of all that are subjective and objective – upon the allegedly subjective origin of thought processes and concepts – should be universally unacceptable.
Therefore, I think we should get behind Heidegger’s seemingly metaphysical words – all based on the human stage on which Being is thought – by chipping his prohibitively poetical and mystifying language off its rhetorically Reality-adumbrating shades, in order to get at the senses and implications of his Fundamental Ontology as Being-historical Thinking. It suffices here to admit that the history of Being is not the general concept of the history of the thought of Being, and not the history of the thought of Being.
Moreover, it is not a necessity for philosophy that the Humean-Kantian stress on the subject-aspect of thought be carried forward to such an extent that whatever is thought has merely subjectively metaphysical Ideal presuppositions. All subjective presuppositions must somehow be taken to possess the merely subjective character.
There are, of course, presuppositions with some conceptual character. But to the extent some of them are absolute, they are to be taken as absolutely non-subjective. These presuppositions are applicable without exception to all that is, e.g. To Be and all Categories that may be attributed to all that exist. HENCE, SUBJECTIVE PRESUPPOSITIONS ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR CONCEPTUAL PRESUPPOSITIONS.
This fact should be borne out while doing philosophy, without which no philosophy and science are possible. The weight of the subject-aspect continues to be true of thought insofar as we go to non-absolute details of metaphysical presuppositions and empirical details, and not when we think only of the metaphysical Ideals of all existents in themselves.
It is true that there is no complete chipping off of the merely subjective or anthropological aspect of the Heideggerian theory. Nor is there an analysis without already interpreting anything. The guiding differentiation here should be that between “the subjective” and the “conceptual”. The conceptual is not merely subjective, but also objective. It is objective due to the inheritance pattern behind it from the objectual.
Such a hermeneutic is basic to all understanding, speculation, feeling, and sensing. The linguistically and otherwise symbolic expression of concepts and their concatenations is to be termed as the denotative universals and their concatenations.
At the purely conceptual level we have connotation. These are purely conceptual universals and their concatenations. Since these are not merely a production of the mind but primarily that by the involvement of the generated data from the little selection of the phenomena from physical processes, which are from a highly selected group of levels of objectual processes, which belong to the things themselves.
At the level of the phenomena, levels of objectual processes, and the things themselves there are universals, which we shall term ontological universals and their conglomerations. These conglomerations are termed so because they have the objectual content at the highest level available within the processes of sensing, feeling, understanding, speculation, etc.
2. Conclusions on Heidegger Proper
The above should not necessarily mean (1) that we cannot base thought fully on the Metaphysical Ideals of “To Be” and “the state of existents as somethings”, and (2) that we cannot get sufficiently deep into the fundamental implications of his work by side-lining the purely subjective concepts of the fundamental metaphysical concepts. This claim is most true of the concept of To Be.
To Be is the simultaneously processual-verbal and nomic-nominal aspect of Reality-in-total, and not merely that of any specific being, phenomenon, or concept. For Heidegger, To Be (Being) is somehow a private property of Dasein, the Being-thinking being. To Be which is the most proper subject matter of Einaic Ontology (metaphysics based completely on the trans-thought fact of the Einai, “To Be” of Reality-in-total) is not the Being that Dasein thinks or the Being that is given in Dasein, because To Be belongs to Reality-in-total together and in all its parts.
Even in Heidegger’s later phase highlighted best by his Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning, his concept of To Be as belonging to the Dasein which is the authentically Being-thinking human being has not changed substantially. Even here he continues to project positively the history of Being-thinking human being as the authentic Being-historical process and as the essence of the history of all that can be thought of.
Against the above metaphysical backdrop of essentially anthropocentric definitions, I write this critique based on cosmological-metaphysical necessities in philosophy, and indirectly evaluate what I consider as the major ontological imperfection in Heidegger’s thought from the viewpoint of the Categorial demands of the history of metaphysics, various provincial ontologies and scientific ontology, and of the way in which I conceive the jolts and peaks in such history.
Along with the purely meta-metaphysical To Be, (1) I present the metaphysical abstract notions of Extension (= compositeness: i.e., having parts) and Change (= impacts by composites: i.e., part-to-part projection of impact elements) as the irreducibly metaphysical Categories of all existents and (2) argue that Extension-Change existence in their non-abstract togetherness as existents is nothing but Universal Causation (= everything is Existence-Change-wise existent, i.e. if not universally causal, existence is vacuous).
These are metaphysical principles that Heidegger and most philosophers till today have not recognized the primordiality of. Most of them tend to fix to existence universal or partial or absolutely no causality. In short, Universal Causation, even in some allegedly non-causal aspects of cosmology, quantum physics, philosophy of mind, and human sciences, is to be the taken as a priorias and co-implied by existence (To Be), because anything existent is extended and changing...! No more should sciences or philosophy doubt Universal Causality. Herein consists the merit of Einaic Ontology as a universally acceptable metaphysics behind all sciences – not merely of human sciences.
To Be is the highest Transcendental Ideal; Reality-in-total is the highest Transcendent Ideal; and Reality-in-general is the highest Transcendental-Transcendent Ideal of generalized theoretical concatenation of ontological universals in consciousness. These are meta-metaphysical in shape. They are not at all classificational (categorizing) of anything in this world or in thought.
Although Heidegger has not given a Categorial scheme of all existents or Categorial Ideals for all metaphysics and thinking, he is one of the few twentieth century thinkers of ontological consequence, after Aristotle (in favour of an abstract concept of Being) and Kant (against treating the concept of Being as an attribute), to have dealt extensively with a very special concept of Being and our already interpretive ability to get at To Be.
I present here in gist the difference between the Dasein-Interpreted concept of Being and the ontologically most widely committed, Einaic Ontological, nomic-nominal, and processual-verbal concept of To Be, which should be metaphysically the highest out-there presupposition of all thought and existence. This is the relevance of metaphysics as a trans-science.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
MINIMAL METAPHYSICAL PHYSICALISM vs. PANPSYCHISMS AND MONISMS: Beyond Mind-Body Dualism
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph. D., Dr. phil.
Any one kind of smallest substance cannot be fixed upon by any realistic theory or experiment. Everything is in process, in all its near-infinitesimal parts, none of the parts of which ever stops being bodily and hence further processual within. If not bodily, it can only be non-existent, vacuous.
Hence, I hold that physical and biologically physical causal effects are not reducible to any a-tomic or monadic substance, but instead, processual-structurally generalizable to the metaphysically minimally physical level of the processual structure of activity to be found in any existent and in any part of it.
This is to be so just because any physically bodied process should constitutionally and structurally be reducible to its Extension and Change, and because otherwise the process itself cannot exist. This is the basis of Minimal Metaphysical Physicalism (MMP). I shall explain this Extension-Change requirement here in just a few sentences.
Nothing can exist without obeying the physical-ontological conditions of existence, namely, that the entity should be extended (be in Extension), i.e., must have finite parts, and these entities and their parts must exert impacts outwards and inwards (be in Change). Otherwise, there will be only absolute vacuum, non-entity. Extension and Change are the minimal Categories of all existents. Extension-Change-wise existence is Causality, i.e., existent bodily parts constantly cause impacts on a finite number of other similar entities. Hence, all existents are universally causal. A unit of causation with a causal and an effect part is a Process.
Thus, we shift the concentration of physicalism beyond merely physical properties, onto the minimum necessary physical-ontological Categories. Categories are not properties. Properties are admixtures of many ontological universals (ways of being of processes), whereas Categories are the conditions for the possibility of existence.
Processual-constitutionally and structurally reducible but ever finitely novelty-contributive causal effects by both human consciousness and machine-driven intelligence too are physical in the broadly metaphysical sense of being existent in Extension and Change. Hence, there cannot be vacuously transmitted information; it must be based on and transmitted in terms of Extension-Change-wise causally and processual existent energy propagations.
Note also that MMP is not pure physicalism or materialism. It implies only that vacuous existence is impossible. Hence, it does not preclude the existence of the Divine or the development of the psyche into a future-eternal continuity of growth in whatever activity it is involved in. But MMP insists that the Divine cannot be a pure vacuum.
For the above reasons, I characterize as metaphysically less aware and scientistically overloaded all sorts of statements like in: (1) the theories of reduction of information into something mysterious, and (2) careless expressions about the constitution and structure of what is called information while terming information as something non-specific and as different from matter and energy.
Thus, by MMP, even information is based on something non-vacuously existing with finite Extension and Change. If the totality of some physical or biologically physical energy-communications is called information, information does not become something different from physical. But information is not a physical existent, it is just a connotative concatenation of symbolically conceptualized ways of being of energy propagations and material processes. Connotative concatenations of symbolically conceptualized ways of being of matter-energy is not only conceptual but also expressed in terms of symbolic languages. These media may be the various forms of language, including mathematics, computer algorithms, etc.
I argue that this is true of both biologically brain-based and merely physically machine-based information – otherwise, their physical base would have to be vacuously non-existent, after their other causally related components have been recognized as fully causal and physical. A transfer from causal physicality to non-causal non-physicality is impossible.
Anything extended and thus is non-vacuously in existence consists of matter-energy (or, if it is anything else, that too must be extended and active). Hence, the mind / spirit too must be out of something simultaneously extended and active – only that there are stages of differentiation between matter-energy as things and matter-energy as consciousness. In that case, why not we call it all as matter-energy, or at least as extended and changing? This is the version of physicalism that I call Minimal Metaphysical Physicalism (MMP).
MMP agrees with a minimum number of aspects (Extension, Change, and their togetherness as Causality) belongs to crass physicalism and aims to see that the conscious is a fully causal but mechanistically non-reductionist outgrowth that can continue with its own evolution in connection with its environment, whatever the environment is.
Panpsychisms:I discuss in this context also panpsychism in order to veer clear of the ‘non-physical ether’ sort of theories of the nature of information. Panpsychism in general is the school of thought that thinks that either (1) everything fundamentally is but mind / spirit, or (2) everything has a mental / spiritual aspect, or (3) everything will at some time become partially mental / spiritual, or (4) everything will at some time in the future become fully mental / spiritual.
Case (1), as in the previous paragraph, faces the question of why it need not be taken as matter-energy. Case (2) has at least empirical problems of evidence.
Cases (3) and (4) are suspect because no reason may be adduced as to why everything must be mental without the sustaining aspect as extended and active matter-energy. The question is as to why everything discontinues being physical matter-energy or becomes just mental energy, maybe at various levels, without material support to be in and to propagate from.
Note that in all these cases the word ‘everything’ is clearly to be used due to the ‘pan-’ of panpsychism. Moreover, if as in (4), everything evolves into being fully mental, there will then come a stage where nothing more is in the purely non-mental matter-energy form for them to evolve into the mental in a physical manner. The arguments get into an irresolvable vicious circle.
In all these cases, there is the tenable possibility of asking ironically whether there exists in panpsychism any metaphysically, physically, and biologically acceptable criterion by which the otherwise so-called non-mental is to be considered as at least elementarily conscious.
There is a further problem. If everything existent would ever become conscious, semi-conscious, or very partially conscious, it would take an infinite duration of time, (1) given the probable case that everything existed from all eternity, and (2) given the eventuality of the rationally more probable cosmological case that everything is being created in finite or infinite amounts into the mode of physical existence of finite causation. I do not discuss such question here, since the same will be treated in another book-length study. [Neelamkavil 2018 deals with related possibilities from the cosmological viewpoint.]
To put the matter short: Whatever the extent of absorption of everything in the cosmos is supposed be by the mental, the absorption cannot be absolute. The whole physical cannot be converted into mental energy, conscious subtle energy, etc. at any time. That is, the eternal recurrence theory has no basis. At any given time with respect to the local time of any part of the cosmos, the physical aspect will continue to exist, and of course also the mental. The latter will be only in those environments which physically evolve into becoming conducive to the evolution of physical elements into biologically physical beings.
Monisms: Monism is the theory that insists that everything existent must be either fully matter-energy or fully mind. The arguments in the case of absolutely reductionist physicalism and panpsychism apply also here without exception. This is not to speak of mystical monisms like some of the highpoints in Hindu philosophies (I am not speaking of the practice in the Hindu religion which consists of many religions, but of some philosophical trends), some Western philosophies, and above all, New Age religions of universal energy.
In the main versions of Hinduism, somehow the Other and the Self have to be one at the level of absolute truth and different at the level of relative truth. Such a discussion is beyond the purview of this discussion. The argument I suggest below is not so simple as to resist surprising details for further discussion.
If the cosmos and the Ātmán are identical with Bráhman at the level of absolute truth and are somehow different at the level of relative truth, there is much contradiction. If, as physical beings, we can even imagine the absolute truth, then we can have some access to it! In this case, the cosmos and the Ātmán need to be identical with Bráhman. But there are also the pragmatic-level differences, which are unthinkably different from the so-conceived identity!
In this case, in any sort of theory, monism does not work harmoniously with the physical nature of the cosmos.
In this case, in any sort of theory, monism does not work harmoniously with the physical nature of the cosmos.
This much for the time being!
(The section on Monisms and their interpretation in terms of MMP will continue to develop. I shall constantly update this part of the text and wherever it is deemed appropriate.)
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
COMPLEXITY IN SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS:
DIFFERENCES AND IMPORTANCE
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. Introduction
With an introductory apology for repeating a few definitions in various arguments here below and justifying the same as necessary for clarity, I begin to differentiate between the foundations of the concept of complexity in the physical sciences and in philosophy. I reach the conclusion as to what in the concept of complexity is problematic, because the complexity in physical and biological processes may not be differentiable in terms of complexity alone.
Thereafter I build a concept much different from complexity for application in the development of brains, minds, consciousness etc. I find it a fine way of saving causation, freedom, the development of the mental, and perhaps even the essential aspects of the human and religious dimension in minds.
Concepts of complexity considered in the sciences are usually taken in general as a matter of our inability to achieve measuremental differentiation between certain layers of measurementally integrated events within a process or set of processes and the same sort of measurementally integrated activities within another process or set of processes.
But here there is an epistemological defect: We do not get every physical event and every aspect of one physical event to measure. We have just a layer of the object’s total events for us to attempt to measure. This is almost always forgotten by any scientist doing complexity science. One tends to generalize the results for the case of the whole object! Complexity in the sciences is not at all a concept exactly of measurement of complexity in one whole physically existent process within itself or a set of processes within themselves.
First, what is termed as complexity in an entity is only the measure of our inability to achieve measurements of that part of a layer of process which has been measured or attempted to be measured. Secondly, always there is a measuremental comparison in the sciences in order to fix the measure of complexity in the aspects that are measured or attempted to measure. This is evidently a wrong sort of concept.
The essential difference here must be sharpened further. As a result of what is said above, the following seems more appropriate. Instead of being a measure of the complexities of one or a set of processes, complexity in science is a concept of the difference between (1) our achieved abilities and inabilities to achieve the measurement of actual complexity of certain levels of one physical process or a set of processes and (2) other types of levels of the extent of our ability and inability to measurement within another process or set of processes. This is strange with respect to the claims being made of complexity of whichever physical process a science considers to measure the complexity.
If a scientist had a genuine measurement of complexity, one would not have called it complexity. We have no knowledge of a higher or highest complexity to compare a less intense complexity with. In all cases of complexity science, what we have are just comparisons with either more or less intense complexities. This makes the concept of complexity very complex to deal with.
2. Is Complexity Really Irreducible?
On a neutral note, each existent physical process should possess great complexity. How much? We do not know exactly; but we know exactly that it is neither infinite nor zero. This truth is the Wisdom of complexity. Let us call it complexity philosophy. This philosophical concept of complexity within the thing itself (CI) is different from the methodologically measurement-based concept of complexity (CM) in the sciences. In CM, only the measured and measurable parts of complexity are taken into consideration and the rest of the aspects and parts of the existent physical process under consideration are forgotten.
If this were not true, the one who proposes this is bound to prove that all the aspects and parts of the physical process or at least of the little layer of it under measurement are already under any one or more or all measurementally empirical procedures with respect to or in terms of that layer of the process.
To explain the same differently, the grade of complexity in the sciences is the name of the difference (i.e., in terms of ‘more’ or ‘less’) between the grades of difficulty and ease of measuring a specific layer of causal activity within one process and a comparable or non-comparable layer of causal activity in another.
Both must be measured in terms of the phenomena received from them and the data created of them. Naturally, these have been found to be too complex to measure well enough, because we do not directly measure, but instead measure in terms of scales based on other more basic scales, phenomena, and data. But the measure-elements titled infinite-finite-zero are slightly more liberated of the directly empirically bound notions. I anticipate some arguing that even these are empirically bound. I am fully agreed. The standpoint from which I called the former as formed out of directly empirically bound notions is different, that is all.
Both the above (the grades of difficulty and ease of measuring a specific layer of causal activity within one process and a comparable or non-comparable layer of causal activity in another) must be measured in terms of certain modes of physical phenomena and certain scales set for these purposes. But this is not the case about the scale of infinity-finitude-zero, out of which we can eternally choose finitude for the measure of ease and difficulty of measuring a specific layer of causal activity without reference to any other.
The measure-difference between the causal activities is not the complexity, nor is it available to be termed so. Instead, complexity is the difference between (1) the ease and difficulty of measuring the one from within the phenomena issuing from certain layers of the physical process and the data created by us out of the phenomena, and (2) the ease and difficulties of measuring the same in the other.
In any case, this measure-difference of ease and difficulty with respect to the respective layers of the processes can naturally be only of certain layers of activity within the processes, and not of all the layers and kinds of activity in them both. Evidently, in the absence of scale-based comparison, their complexity cannot be termed a high or a low complexity considered within itself. Each such must be compared with at least another such measurementally determined layer/s of process in another system.
3. Extent of Complexity outside and within Complexity
The question arises now as to whether any process under complexity inquiry has other layers of activity arising from within themselves and from within the layers themselves from which directly the phenomena have issued and have generated the data within the bodily, conscious, and cognitive system of the subjects and their instruments.
Here the only possible answer is that there is an infinite number of such layers in any finite-content physical processual entity, and within any layer of a process we can find infinite other sub-layers, and between the layers and sub-layers there are finite causal connections, because every existent has parts that are in Extension and Change.
The infinite number of such complexity layers are each arrangeable in a scale of decremental content-strength in such a way that no finite-content process computes up to infinite content-strength. This does not mean that there are no actual differences between any two processes in the complexity of their layers of activity, or in the total activity in each of them.
Again, what I attempt to suggest here is that the measured complexity of anything or of any layer of anything is just a scale-based comparison of the extent of our capacity to discover all the complexity within one process or layer of process, as compared to the same in another process or layer of process.
4. Possible Generalizations of Complexity
Any generalization of processes in themselves concerning their complexity proper (i.e., the extent of our capacity to discover all the complexity within one process or one layer of activities of a process) must now be concluded to be in possession of only the quantitative qualities that never consist of a specific or fixed scale-based number, because the comparison is on a range-scale of ‘more than’ and ‘less than’.
This generalization is what we may at the most be able to identify regarding the complexity within any specific process without any measuremental comparison with another or many others. Non-measuremental comparison is therefore easier and truer in the general sense; and measuremental comparison is more applicable in cases of technical and technological achievements.
The latter need not be truer than the former, if we accept that what is truer must be more general than specific. Even what is said merely of one processual object must somehow be applicable to anything that is of the same nature as the specific processual object. Otherwise, it cannot be a generalizable truth. For this reason, the former seems to be truer than the latter.
Now there are only three possibilities for the said sort of more general truth on comparative complexity: accepting the infinite-finite-zero values as the only well-decidable values. I have called them the Maximal-Medial-Minimal (MMM) values in my work of 2018, namely, Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology.
Seen from this viewpoint, everything physically existent has great processual-structural complexity, and this is neither infinite nor zero, but merely finite – and impossible to calculate exactly or even at any satisfactory exactitude within a pre-set scale, because (1) the layers of a process that we attempt to compute is but a mere portion of the process as such, (2) each part of each layer has an infinite number of near-infinitesimal parts, and (3) we are not in a position to get at much depths and breadths into all of these at any time.
Hence, the two rationally insufficient conclusions are:
(1) The narrowly empirical-phenomenologically measuremental, thus empirically partially objective, and simultaneously empirically sufficiently subjective amount of complexity (i.e., the extent of our capacity and incapacity to discover all the complexity) in any process by use of a scale-level comparison of two or more processes.
(2) The complexity of entities without having to speak about their existence in every part in Extension-Change and the consequently evident Universal Causality.
These are the empirically highly insulated, physical-ontologically insufficiently realistic sort of concept of complexity that the sciences entertain and can entertain. Note that this does not contradict or decry technological successes by use of scientific truths. But claiming them to be higher truths on complexity than philosophical truths is unjustifiable.
Now the following question is clearly answerable. What is meant by the amount of complexity that any existent physical process can have in itself? The only possible answer would be that of MMM, i.e., that the complexity within any specific thing is not a comparative affair within the world, but only determinable by comparing the complexity in physical processes with that in the infinitely active and infinitely stable Entity (if it exists) and the lack of complexity in the zero-activity and zero-stability sort of pure vacuum. It can also be made based on a pre-set or conventionalized arithmetic scale, but such cannot give the highest possible truth probability, even if it is called “scientific”.
MMM is the most realistic generalization beyond the various limit possibilities of scale-controlled quantities of our incapacity to determine the amount of complexity in any layer of processes, and without incurring exact numbers, qualifications, etc. The moment a clear measuremental comparison and pinning up the quantity is settled for, it becomes a mere scientific statement without the generality that the MMM realism offers.
Nonetheless, measuremental studies have their relevance in respect of their effects in specific technological and technical circumstances. But it must be remembered that the application of such notions is not directly onto the whole reality of the object set/s or to Reality-in-total, but instead, only to certain layers of the object set/s. Truths at that level do not have long life, as is clear from the history of the sciences and the philosophies that have constantly attempted to limit philosophy with the methods of the sciences.
5. Defining Complexity Closely
Consider any existent process in the cosmos. It is in a state of finite activity. Every part of a finite-content process has activity in every one of its near-infinitesimal parts. This state of having activity within is complexity. In general, this is the concept of complexity. It is not merely the extent of our inability to measure the complexity in anything in an empirical manner.
Every process taken in itself has a finite number of smaller, finite, parts. The parts spoken of here are completely processual. Nothing remains in existence if a part of it is without Extension or without Change. An existent part with finite Extension and Change together is a unit process when the cause part and the effect part are considered as the aspects or parts of the part in question.
Every part of a part has parts making every part capable of being a unit process and in possession of inner movements of extended parts, all of which are in process. This is what I term complexity. Everything in the cosmos is complex. We cannot determine the level of complexity beyond the generalized claim that complexity is normally limited within infinite or finite or zero, and that physical and biological processes in the cosmos come within the finitude-limit.
Hereby is suggested also the necessity of combining the philosophical truth about complexity and the scientific concept of the same for augmentation of theoretical and empirical-scientific achievements in the future. While determining scientifically the various natures and qualities of complexity, chaos, threshold states, etc. in a manner not connected to the philosophical concept of it based on the MMM method of commitment access to values of content and their major pertinents, then, scientific research will remain at an elementary level – although the present theoretical, experimental, and technological successes may have been unimaginably grand. Empirical advancement must be based on the theoretical.
Constant effort to differentiate anything from anything else strongly, by making differentiations between two or more processes and the procedures around them, is very much part of scientific research. In the procedural thrust and stress related to these, the science of complexity (and all other sciences, sub-sciences, etc.) suffer from the lack of ontological commitment to the existence of the processes in Extension-Change and Universal Causality.
The merely scientific attitude is due to a stark deficit of the most general and deepest possible Categories that can pertain to them, especially to Extension-Change and Universal Causality. Without these, the scientist will tend to work with isolated and specifically determined causal processes and identify the rest as non-causal, statistically causal, or a-causal!
6. Complexity in Consciousness
The above discussion shows that the common concept of complexity is not the foundation on which biological evolution, growth of consciousness, etc. can directly be based. I have plans to suggest a new concept.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
HOW TO GROUND SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY TOGETHER AXIOMATICALLY?
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
We see many theories in physics, mathematics, etc. becoming extremely axiomatic and rigorous. They call themselves or attempt to be as quantitative as possible. But are adequate comparisons between mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, human sciences, and philosophy, and adequate adaptation of the axiomatic method possible by creating a system of all exact, physical, and human sciences that depend only on the quantitively qualitative proportionalities and call them invariables?
They cannot do well enough to explain Reality-in-total, because Reality-in-total primarily involves all sorts of ontological universals that are purely qualitative, and some of them are the most fundamental, proportionality-type, quantitative invariables of all physical existents in their specificity and totality in their natural kinds. But as the inquiry comes to Reality-in-total, ontological qualitative universals must come into the picture. Hence, merely quantitative (mathematical) explanations do not exhaust the explanation of Reality-in-total.
Existence as individuals and existence in groups are not differentiable and systematizable in terms of quantitatively qualitative universals alone. Both qualitative and quantitatively qualitative universals are necessary for this. Both together are general qualities pertaining to existents in their processual aspect, not merely in their separation from each other. Therefore, the primitive notions (called traditionally as Categories) of Reality-in-total must be ontological qualitative universals involving both the qualitative and quantitative aspects. The most basic of universals that pertain properly to Reality-in-total are now to be found.
Can the primitive notions (Categories) and axioms of the said sciences converge so that the axioms of a system of Reality take shape from a set of the highest possible ontological Categories as simple sentential formulations of the Categories which directly imply existents? This must be deemed necessary for philosophy, natural sciences, and human sciences, because these deal with existents, unlike the formal sciences that deal only with the qualitatively quantitative form of arguments.
Thus, in the case of mathematics and logic there can be various sorts of quantitative and qualitative primitive notions (categories) and then axioms that use the primitive notions in a manner that adds some essential, pre-defined, operations. But the sciences and philosophy need also the existence of their object-processes. For this reason, the primitive axioms can be simple sentential formulations involving the Categories and nothing else. This is in order to avoid indirect existence statements and to involve existence in terms exclusively of the Categories.
Further, the sciences together could possess just one set of sufficiently common primitive notions of all knowledge, from which also the respective primitive notions and axioms of mathematics, logic, physical and human sciences, and philosophy may be derived. I support this view because the physical-ontological Categories involving the existence of Reality and realities, in my opinion, must be most general and fully exhaustive of the notion of To Be (existence) in a qualitatively universal manner that is applicable to all existents in their individual processual and total processual senses.
Today the nexus or the interface of the sciences and philosophies is in a crisis of dichotomy between truth versus reality. Most scientists, philosophers, and common people rush after “truths”. But who, in scientific and philosophical practice, wants to draw unto the possible limits the consequences of the fact that we can at the most have ever better truths, and not final truths as such?
Finalized truths as such may be concluded to in cases where there is natural and inevitable availability of an absolute right to use the logical Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, especially in order to decide between concepts related to the existence and non-existence of anything out there.
Practically very few may be seen generalizing upon and extrapolating from this metaphysical and logical state of affairs beyond its epistemological consequences. In the name of practicality, ever less academicians want today to connect ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total by drawing from the available and imaginable commonalities of both.
The only thinkable way to accentuate the process of access to ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total is to look for the truest possible of all truths with foundations on existence (nominal) / existing (gerund) / To Be (verbal). The truest are those propositions where the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle can be applied best. The truest are not generalizable and extendable merely epistemologically, but also metaphysically, physical-ontologically, mathematically, biologically, human-scientifically, etc.
The agents that permit generalization and extrapolation are the axioms that are the tautologically sentential formulations of the most fundamental of all notions (Categories) and imply nothing but the Categories of all that exist – that too with respect to the existence of Realit-in-total. These purely physical-ontological implications of existence are what I analyze further in the present work. One may wonder how these purely metaphysical, physical-ontological axioms and their Categories can be applicable to sciences other than physics and philosophy.
My justification is as follows: Take for example the case of the commonality of foundations of mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language. The notions that may be taken as the primitive notions of mathematics were born not from a non-existent virtual world but instead from the human capacity of spatial, temporal, quantitatively qualitative, and purely qualitative imagination.
I have already been working so as to show qualitative (having to do with the ontological universals of existents, expressed in terms of adjectives) quantitativeness (notions based on spatial and temporal imagination, where, it should be kept in mind, that space-time are epistemically measuremental) may be seen to be present in their elements in mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language.
The agents I use for this are: ‘ontological universals’, ‘connotative universals’, and ‘denotative universals’. In my opinion, the physical-ontological basis of these must and can be established in terms merely of the Categories of Extension-Change, which you find being discussed briefly here.
Pitiably, most scientists and philosophers forget that following the exhaustively physical-ontological implications of To Be in the foundations of science and philosophy is the best way to approach Reality well enough in order to derive the best possible of truths and their probable derivatives. Most of them forget that we need to rush after Reality, not merely after truths and truths about specific processes.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
PHYSICAL AND EXACT SCIENCES AND AXIOMATIC PHILOSOPHY:
INTODUCING GROUNDING
Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.
1. WHY SHOULD PHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY BE GROUNDED?
I get surprised each time when some physicists tell me that either the electromagnetic (EM) or the gravitational (G) or both the forms of energy do not exist – that EM and G are, are "existent" neither like nor unlike material bodies – but that EM and G are to be treated or expressed as mathematical waves or particles propagated from material objects that of course exist for all sciences.
Some of them put in all their energies to show that both EM and G are mere mathematical objects, fields, etc., and not physically existent objects or fields of energy emissions that then become propagations from material bodies. If propagation from material bodies, then their nature too would have to be similar to that of material bodies!!! This is something that the mathematical realists of theoretical physics and cosmology cannot bear!!!
This is similar in effect to Newton and his followers thinking honestly and religiously that at least gravitation and perhaps also other energies are just miraculously non-bodily actions at a distance without any propagation particles / wavicles. But I admit that I explained certain things in the first paragraph above as if I myself were a Newtonian. This has been on purpose.
Even in the 21st century, we must be sharply aware that from the past more than 120 years the General Theory of Relativity with its various versions and especially its merely mathematical interpretations have succeeded in casting and maintaining the power of a terrifying veil of mathematical miracles on the minds of many scientists – miracles such as the mere spacetime curvature being the meaning of gravitation and all other sorts of fields. The mathematics did not need existence, and hence gravitation did not exist! But the same persons did not create a theory whereby the mathematics does not need the existence of the material world and hence the material world does not exist!!
A similar veil has been installed by quantum physics on the minds of many physicists and their audience too. We do not discuss it here. Hence, I have constructed in four published books a systemic manner of understanding these problems in cosmology and quantum physics. I do not claim perfection in any of my attempts. Hence, I keep perfecting my efforts in the course of time, and hope to achieve some improvement. The following is a very short attempt to summarize in this effort one important point in physics, cosmology, and the philosophy of physics and of cosmology.
There exists the tradition of lapping up whatever physicists may say about their observable and unobservable constructs, based on their own manner of using mathematics. The mathematics used are never transparent. Hence, the reader or the audience may not have the ability to makes judgements based on the minimum physical ontology expected of physicists. I believe that this should stop forever at least in the minds of physicists. Moreover, physicists are not to behave like magicians. Their readers and audience should not practice religious faithfulness to them. Nor should physicists expect it from them.
2. ONTOLOGICALLY QUALITATIVE NATURE OF INVARIANTS
When the search is for the foundations of any science, it is in fact for the invariant aspects of all the realities of that science, and not merely for the invariant aspects of some parts of the realities (object-set/s), methods, conclusions, etc. This does not suffice for science for maximizing success. This is because, any exclusive search for the foundations of the specific object-set or of the discourse of the specific object-set will further require foundations upon the totality of all specific object-sets and their discourse.
We find ourselves in a tradition that believes that proportionality quantities are to be taken as the invariables in physics. But I used to reduce into universal qualities the quantitative-structural aspect of all sciences, that are represented in mathematics as the ontological quantities dealt with in science. The real invariants of physics are not the ontological quantities or proportionalities of certain quantities being treated in physics.
The latter, being only the constant quantities, are one kind of ontological qualities, namely, (1) the quantitatively expressible qualities of processes, e.g., ‘quantity’, ‘one’, ‘addition’, etc. are explicable, respectively, as the qualities: ‘being a specific quantity’, ‘being a unity’, ‘togetherness of two or more units’, etc. The other kind is (2) the ontological qualities of processes in general (say, malleability, toughness, colour, redness, etc.) which cannot directly be expressed as ontological quantities of processes. This shows that pure ontological qualities are a more general notion than ontological quantities and includes the latter.
Explaining ontological qualities in terms of physical quantities cannot be done directly by fundamental physical quantities, but by physical properties that involve fundamental physical quantities. Properties are a mix mainly of ontological qualities and of course includes ontological quantities, of which some are the fundamental physical quantities. Hence, the invariants must be qualities that are generative of and apply to both quantities and non-quantities. These invariants then are fully qualitative.
If the invariants apply to all physical processes, these invariants are qualities ontologically universal to all of them in the specified group. Out of them are constructed properties by mixing many qualitative and quantitatively qualitative universals. Clearly, universals applying to all existents are the real invariants of all Reality – which is a matter to be discussed later.
Since universals are all qualitative and some of them are quantitative as qualities, ontological qualities are broader than mathematical in scope, because, the moment mathematics uses quantities, the use is not of quantities devoid of qualities, but instead, of the quantitative variety of general / universal qualities.
Qualities can also behave as some of the primitive notions that underlie all of physics and other sciences – but this will not exhaust the most necessary foundations of physics and other sciences, because these sciences require the general qualities of all existents, and not merely those of mathematics. These are the axiomatically formulable Categorial notions of philosophy, which latter is thus a general science.
In short, quantitative proportionalities as invariants are very partial with respect to existent processes and their totality. Naturally, philosophy too needs general qualities and not merely quantitative qualities to base the discipline.
3. DIFFERENCES IN FOUNDATIONS: EXACT AND NATURAL SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY
We see many theories in physics, mathematics, etc. becoming extremely axiomatic and rigorous. They call themselves or attempt to be as quantitative as possible. But are adequate comparisons between mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, human sciences, and philosophy, and adequate adaptation of the axiomatic method possible by creating a system of all exact, physical, and human sciences that depend only on the quantitively qualitative proportionalities and call them invariables?
They cannot do well enough to explain Reality-in-total, because Reality-in-total primarily involves all sorts of ontological universals that are purely qualitative, and some of them are the most fundamental, proportionality-type, quantitative invariables of all physical existents in their specificity and totality in their natural kinds. But as the inquiry comes to Reality-in-total, ontological qualitative universals must come into the picture. Hence, merely quantitative (mathematical) explanations do not exhaust the explanation of Reality-in-total.
Existence as individuals and existence in groups are not differentiable and systematizable in terms of quantitatively qualitative universals alone. Both qualitative and quantitatively qualitative universals are necessary for this. Both together are general qualities pertaining to existents in their processual aspect, not merely in their separation from each other. Therefore, the primitive notions (called traditionally as Categories) of Reality-in-total must be ontological qualitative universals involving both the qualitative and quantitative aspects. The most basic of universals that pertain properly to Reality-in-total are now to be found.
Can the primitive notions (Categories) and axioms of the said sciences converge so that the axioms of a system of Reality take shape from a set of the highest possible ontological Categories as simple sentential formulations of the Categories which directly imply existents? This must be deemed necessary for philosophy, natural sciences, and human sciences, because these deal with existents, unlike the formal sciences that deal only with the qualitatively quantitative form of arguments.
Thus, in the case of mathematics and logic there can be various sorts of quantitative and qualitative primitive notions (categories) and then axioms that use the primitive notions in a manner that adds some essential, pre-defined, operations. But the sciences and philosophy need also the existence of their object-processes. For this reason, the primitive axioms can be simple sentential formulations involving the Categories and nothing else. This is in order to avoid indirect existence statements and to involve existence in terms exclusively of the Categories.
Further, the sciences together could possess just one set of sufficiently common primitive notions of all knowledge, from which also the respective primitive notions and axioms of mathematics, logic, physical and human sciences, and philosophy may be derived. I support this view because the physical-ontological Categories involving the existence of Reality and realities, in my opinion, must be most general and fully exhaustive of the notion of To Be (existence) in a qualitatively universal manner that is applicable to all existents in their individual processual and total processual senses.
Today the nexus or the interface of the sciences and philosophies is in a crisis of dichotomy between truth versus reality. Most scientists, philosophers, and common people rush after “truths”. But who, in scientific and philosophical practice, wants to draw unto the possible limits the consequences of the fact that we can at the most have ever better truths, and not final truths as such?
Finalized truths as such may be concluded to in cases where there is natural and inevitable availability of an absolute right to use the logical Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, especially in order to decide between concepts related to the existence and non-existence of anything out there.
Practically very few may be seen generalizing upon and extrapolating from this metaphysical and logical state of affairs beyond its epistemological consequences. In the name of practicality, ever less academicians want today to connect ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total by drawing from the available and imaginable commonalities of both.
The only thinkable way to accentuate the process of access to ever broader truths compatible to Reality-in-total is to look for the truest possible of all truths with foundations on existence (nominal) / existing (gerund) / To Be (verbal). The truest are those propositions where the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle can be applied best. The truest are not generalizable and extendable merely epistemologically, but also metaphysically, physical-ontologically, mathematically, biologically, human-scientifically, etc.
The agents that permit generalization and extrapolation are the axioms that are the tautologically sentential formulations of the most fundamental of all notions (Categories) and imply nothing but the Categories of all that exist – that too with respect to the existence of Reality-in-total. These purely physical-ontological implications of existence are what I analyze further in the present work. One may wonder how these purely metaphysical, physical-ontological axioms and their Categories can be applicable to sciences other than physics and philosophy.
My justification is as follows: Take for example the case of the commonality of foundations of mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language. The notions that may be taken as the primitive notions of mathematics were born not from a non-existent virtual world but instead from the human capacity of spatial, temporal, quantitatively qualitative, and purely qualitative imagination.
I have already been working so as to show qualitative (having to do with the ontological universals of existents, expressed in terms of adjectives) quantitativeness (notions based on spatial and temporal imagination, where, it should be kept in mind, that space-time are epistemically measuremental) may be seen to be present in their elements in mathematics, logic, the sciences, philosophy, and language.
The agents I use for this are: ‘ontological universals’, ‘connotative universals’, and ‘denotative universals’. In my opinion, the physical-ontological basis of these must and can be established in terms merely of the Categories of Extension-Change, which you find being discussed briefly here.
Pitiably, most scientists and philosophers forget that following the exhaustively physical-ontological implications of To Be in the foundations of science and philosophy is the best way to approach Reality well enough in order to derive the best possible of truths and their probable derivatives. Most of them forget that we need to rush after Reality, not merely after truths and truths about specific processes.
4. SYSTEMIC FOUNDATIONS VS. EXISTENCE/TS, NON-EXISTENCE/TS
4.1. Basis of Axiomatizing Science and Philosophy
The problem of axiomatizing philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together is that we need to somehow bring in the elemental aspects of existence and existents, and absorb the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents. Here it should be mentioned that axiomatizing mathematics and logic does not serve the axiomatization of philosophy, and/or philosophy of science, and/or all the sciences together. So far in the history of philosophy and science we have done just this, plus attempts to axiomatize the sciences separately or together by ignoring the elemental aspects of non-existence and non-existent objects that pertain to existents.
Existence (To Be) is not a condition for the possibility of existence of Reality-in-total or specific processual objects, but instead, To Be is the primary condition for all thought, feeling, sensation, dreaming, etc. All other conditions are secondary to this. If To Be is necessary as the condition for the possibility of any philosophy and science as discourse, we need to be axiomatic in philosophy and science about (1) existence (To Be, which is of all that exist) and/or (2) the direct and exhaustive implications of existence.
It is impossible to define existence without using words that involve existence. But it is possible to discover the exhaustive implications of To Be in order to use them in all discourse. Therefore, towards the end of this short document, I shall name what could be the inevitable primitive notions that are exhaustive of To Be and that may be used to create axioms for both philosophy and science together.
To put it differently, I attempt here to base all philosophy and science on the concept of existence of Reality-in-total as whatever it is, by deriving from the concept of the existence of all that exist the only possible (i.e., the exhaustive) implications of To Be.
Of course, the basic logical notions of identity and contradiction will have to be used here without as much danger as when we use them in statements on other less fundamental notions. I would justify their use here as the rational inevitabilities in the foundations – not as inevitabilities in the details that issue later. The inevitabilities in the later details need never to be realized as inevitabilities, because To Be implies some fundamental notions which will take case of this.
That is, the various ways in which the principles of identity and contradiction should be seen as inexact and inappropriate may be discovered in the in fields of derivation beyond the provinces of the fundamental Categorial implications of To Be. This latter part of the claims is not to be discussed here, because it involves much more than logic – in fact, a new conception of logic, which I would term as systemic logic.
Let me come to the matter that I promise in the name of the foundations of ‘Axiomatic Philosophy and Science’. First of all, to exist is not to be merely nothing. In this statement I have taken access to the Laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle at one go in that whatever is, must be whatever it is, and not its opposite which is nothing but nothing, nor a middle point between the two extremes.
Therefore, existence must always be non-vacuous. That is, the primary logical implication of To Be is the non-non-being of whatever exists. But such a logical implication is insufficient for the sciences and philosophy, because we deal there with existents. Hence, let us ignore the logical implication as a truism. The existential implications of To Be are what we need.
I have so far not found any philosopher or scientist who derived these implications. But let us try, even if the result that obtained may be claimed by many ancients and others as theirs. In fact, theirs were not metaphysical / physical-ontological versions. Their epistemic versions of the same have been very useful, but have served a lot to misguide both philosophy and science into give “truth/s” undue importance in place of “Reality”. My claim about the exhaustive physical(-ontological) implications of To Be that I derive here is that they do not incur this fallacy.
To Be is not a thing. It is, as agreed at the start, the very condition for the possibility of discourse: philosophy, science, literature, art … and, in general, of experience. The To Be of existents is thus not a pre-condition for To Be – instead, it is itself the source of all conditions of discourse, not of existence.
4.2. Extension, Change, Universal Causality
If To Be is non-vacuous, it means that all existents are something non-vacuously real. Something-s need not be what we stipulate them to be, both by name and qualifications. But the purely general implication is that existents are something-s. This is already part of philosophical activity, but not of the sciences. We need to concretize this implication at the first tire of concrete implications. Only thereafter are sciences possible.
To be something is to be non-vacuous, i.e., to be in non-vacuous extendedness. However much you may attempt to show that Extension does not follow from the notions of To Be, something, etc., the more will be extent of your failure. You will go on using the Laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, and never reach any conclusion useful for the sciences. Then you will have to keep your mouth and mind shut. I prefer for myself meaningful discourse in science and philosophy – when I meditate I shall attempt to keep my mind and lips as “shut” as possible.
As said above, Extension is one of the primary physical-ontological implications of To Be. Nothing exists without being extended, without being in Extension. Extended something-s are not just there in Extension. If in Extension, everything has parts. Thus, having parts is one of the primary implications of being something in existence. I term it alternatively also as Compositionality.
It is the very implication of being something that something-s are in Change. The deepest and most inevitable form of implication of Change is this: nothing that is in existence with parts can have the status of being something existent without the parts impacting at least a few others. This is the meaning of Change: impact-formation by extended parts. Any existent has parts existing in the state of impact formation in other parts and in themselves.
Hence, Change is the only other implication of To Be, not second to but equally important as Extension. I call it differently also as Impact-Formation. The notion of motion or mobility does not carry the full weight of the meaning of Change.
There cannot be any other implication equally directly derivable from To Be as Extension and Change can be. In other words, all other implications can be found to be sub-implications of Extension-Change, i.e., involving only Extension-Change. Showing them as involving only Extension-Change would suffice to show their sub-implications status with respect to Extension-Change.
Existence in Extension-Change belongs to anything existent, hence ubiquitous – to be met with in any existent. This is nothing but existence in the ubiquitously (to be met with in any existent) extended form of continuance in ubiquitous (to be met with in any existent) impact formation. What else is this but Universal Causality?
If you say that causation is a mere principle of science – as most philosophers and scientists have so far thought – I reject this view. From the above paragraphs I conclude that Causation is metaphysically (physical-ontologically) secondary only to existence. Everybody admits today that we and the universe exist. But we all admit that every part of our body-mind and every existent in the world must be causal because we are non-vacuously existent in Extension-Change.
This means that something has been fundamentally wrong about Causality in philosophy and science. We need to begin doing philosophy and science based fully on To Be and its implications, namely, Extension-Change-wise continuance, which is nothing but being in Universal Causation. It is universal because everything is existent. Universal Causality is the combined shape of Extension-Change. Causation the process of happening of Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence. Causality is the state of being in Extension-Change-wise continuance in existence.
4.3. Now, What Are Space and Time?
Note that what we measurementally and thus epistemically call as space is metaphysically to be termed as Extension. Space is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Extension. That is, space is the quantity of measurement of Extension, of measurements of the extended nature of existents. In this sense, space is an epistemic quality.
Further, note also that what we call time is the measuremental aspect of the primary quality of all existents, namely, of Change. If there is no impact-formation by parts of existents, there is no measurement called time. Hence, time is the epistemic quality of measurements of Change, which is the impact-formation tendency of all existents.
Immanuel Kant termed space as the condition for the possibility of sensibility, and Edmund Husserl called it as one of the fundamental essences of thought. Space and time in Kant are epistemic since they are just epistemic conditions of possibility; and essences in Husserl are epistemic, clearly as they are based on the continuous act of epochḗ.
Nothing can exist in epistemic space-time. That is, language and mind tend to falsely convert space and time into something that together condition existents. Thus, humans tend to believe that our measuremental concepts and derivative results are all really and exactly very essential to existent something-s, and not merely to our manner of knowing, feeling, sensing, etc.
This is the source of scientific and philosophical misconceptions that have resulted in the reification of the conclusions and concepts of thought and feeling. Thus, this is also the source of conceptual insufficiencies in philosophical and scientific theories. Scientism and scientific and mathematical instrumentalism justify these human tendencies in the name of pragmatism about science and thought.
Reification of certain statistical conclusions as probabilities and the metaphysicization of probable events as the only possible events are not merely due to the above sort of reification. It is also by reason of the equivocation of probability with possibility and the reification of our scientific and statistical conclusions of probabilities as real possibilities. Humans tend to forget that a certain amount of probability is exactly and properly the measure of the extent of human capacity (and by implication, of human incapacity), at a given instance and at a given measuremental moment of history, to use instruments to get at all the existents that are the causes of a given process.
As we know, To Be is not a Category / Quality. It is the very condition that is the same as the existence of something-s as whatever they are. This is a tautology: To Be is To Be. If To Be is a metaphysical notion, the physical-ontologically and scientifically relevant metaphysical implications of To Be are Extension-Change. These are the highest and only highest Categories of all philosophy and science. Universal Causality is the notion of combination of Extension-Change. It is not an indirectly derived notion.
If scientists tend to relegate such notions as philosophical, they are trying to be practical in a silly manner. Even scientific results need the hand of proper and best possible formulations of notions and theoretical principles. Theoretical principles (say, of causation, conservation, gravitation, matter, mass, energy, etc., which may clearly be formulated in terms of Extension-Change-wise existence and existents) must be formulated in the most systemic manner possible.
I would call Extension, Change, and the combination-term Universal Causality not merely as the highest metaphysical Categories. They are the very primitive terms in addition to terms like ‘existent’, ‘matter-energy’, etc., which are necessary for an axiomatic formulation of the foundations of the sciences. Hence, we need to formulate axiomatically both philosophy and science.
Universal Causality may hereafter also be taken as an axiom in philosophy and the sciences. An axiom is a formulated basic principle. In that case, why not formulate also the primitive notions (Categories) of Extension and Change as axioms? In short, the difference between mathematical-logical axiomatic foundations and physical-philosophical axiomatic foundations is that in the former set primitive notions are not axioms, and in the latter primitive notions may be formulated as axioms.
In the light of the above discussion, it becomes clear that Einstein’s postulation of gravitation and matter-energy as space-time curvatures is at the most a formulation of these notions in terms of the mathematical necessity to use space-time (epistemic) measurements and theorize based on them in theoretical physics.
Einstein was immersed in the neo-positivism and logical positivism of his time. Hence, he could not reason beyond the use, by mathematics, of quantitative notions as concrete measurements. Scientists and philosophers who still follow Einstein on this sort of a misguided reification of epistemic space and time are taking refuge not on Einstein but on his theoretical frailties. Even today most scientists and philosophers are unaware that quantities are in fact quantitatively characterized pure qualities – and not properties that are combinations of qualitative and quantitatively qualitative notions.
Minkowski formulated the mathematics of space-time and thus reduced space-time into a sort of ether in which physical processes take place gravitationally. Einstein put gravitation into this language and mistook this language (the language of mathematical space-time) to be the very matter-energy processes that curve according to gravitational processes. For the mathematics this is no too great error, because it worked. This is why some physicists even today consider gravitation and/or all energy forms as ether, as if without this stuff in the background material bodies would not be able to move around in the cosmos! A part of the cosmos is thus being converted into a background conditioner!
Only formal functioning has so far been found necessary in mathematics. Derivation from the metaphysical sources of existents and non-existents has not so far been found necessary in mathematics. But, note here also this: for more than 100 years physicists and philosophers of physics lapped up this substitution of the language of mathematics for the actual, physically existent, processes, which otherwise should have been treated also metaphysically, and if possible, in a manner that is systemically comprehensive of the sources of all sciences.
The implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents too can help to make the mathematical adaptations work pragmatically. Hence, clearly it does not suffice that only the mathematical formalism attained so far be used in physics and the sciences. The project of science, philosophy, mathematics, and logic must grow out of their limits and become parts of a systemic science with foundations in the implications of existence, non-existence, existents, and non-existents.
I have been attempting to explain in these pages a limited realm of what I otherwise have been attempting to realize. I show only that there are two physical-ontological Categories and some derived axioms (out of these many axioms, only one is discussed here, i.e., Universal Causality), using which we need to formulate not merely philosophy but also physics and other sciences.
But I suggest also that the existence-related and non-existents-related mathematical objects too must be formulated using some primitive terms and axioms that are compatible with the philosophical and physical primitive terms and axioms that may facilitate a systemic approach to all sciences.
4.4. Why Then Is Science Successful?
The awarding of the Nobel Prize 2023 for quantum informatics to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger does not, therefore, mean that all of quantum physics and their assumptions and results are ‘the realities’ behind the ‘truths’ formulated. Instead, it means only that the truths they have formulated are relatively more technology-productive within the context of the other truths and technologies that surround them in physics. Quantum informatics works at a level of effects where we involve only those movements and processes that result in the resulting discoveries, general truths, and the derivative technology.
Similarly, the successes of engineering, informatics, medical processing technology, and the medical science that (as of today) are based on these need not be a proof for the alleged “absolute truth status” of the theories based on Newtonian physics, of molecular and atomic level chemistry and biology, etc. These sciences use only certain contextual levels of interaction in the physical world.
Recollect here the ways in which occidental philosophers dating at least from Parmenides and Heraclitus and extending up until today have been mistaking space and time as (1) two metaphysical categories, or (2) as mere existents, or (3) as illusions.
Oriental philosophies, especially Hindu and Buddhist, have been the best examples of rejecting space-time as metaphysical and as equivalent to permanent substances in a manner that made some Occidental thinkers to look down on them or to reject all of them. In the course of conceptualization that is typical of humans, having to create further theoretical impasses is necessarily to be avoided as best as we can. Such an ideal requires the help of Extension, Change, and Universal Causality.
In the foregoing paragraphs I have only hinted at the necessity of axiomatic philosophy and science. I have only suggested some basic notions in this systemic science. I do also use these notions and some axioms developed from them to formulate a new philosophy of mathematics. I have already published some books based on these and have been developing other such works. I hope to get feedbacks from earnest minds that do not avoid directly facing the questions and the risk of attempting a reply to the questions themselves.
Bibliography
(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.
(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.
(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.
(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.
(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.
I don’t think eternal damnation is universal.
The Anthropic Notion of Existence and “Being-Becoming” in Heidegger: Heidegger’s continuous engagement with ‘nothingness’ in his works has not been about the non-existence of anything specific or the whole of what we call Reality or of its To Be. [-----] Heraclitus never had a notion of becoming that makes everything to escape into absolute nothingness; Parmenides never dissociated from human beings’ notion of being the apparent becoming. Apparent becoming, he thought, is a contradiction to his concept of being. Heidegger depended much on his re-interpretations of Heraclitus and Parmenides. None of them shewed away from Heidegger’s thought whatever is existent or seemingly existent into any absolute becoming or absolute seeming of becoming or absolute nothingness that would reduce the stuff of everything into a nothing in existence.
What Went Wrong in Heidegger's Thought: For the above reasons, within the ‘becoming’ that meant continuous activity, and beyond the ‘being’ that often presented the sense of permanence, Heidegger (1) did not think of the metaphysical approval of ontological commitments behind notions, thoughts, feelings, etc., sought a non-traditional notion of existence that he thought is discourse-bound and language-bound which thus became an anthropic notion of Being without commonalities with other existents, and (2), did not possess methods of dissociating (a) mere subjective and intersubjective objectivity from (b) subjectively and intersubjectively obtained objectivity via objectuality in discourse. Thus, he ended up holding only the (a) above and laughably anthropologized philosophy, science, and human institutions through a sense of superiority of the merely anthropically Being-thinking humans over all others. His politically overshadowing such a notion of Being-thinking humans by a vague identification of it with the Hitler race was naturally a gimmick to use the opportunity to save and elevate himself and his thought and additionally obtain a long opportunity to laugh privately of his own professor.
LINGUISTIC IMPLICATIONS OF EXISTENT PHYSICAL PROCESSES
IN PHYSICAL THEORY
Raphael Neelamkavil
Ph.D. (Quantum Causality), Dr. phil. (Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology)
Minimal Linguistic Implications of Words: I start this discussion with a generally acceptable kernel of what in the very least is meant when we say that something exists. My use of the word ‘electron’ need not mean that any of the models of electron as an existent must as such be the case out-there. This is because the word ‘electron’ is a denotative word constructed linguistically. It denotes a denotable, which exists as whatever it is, without our having to take it to be exactly this way or that way. But there can be at least some physical-ontological guidelines as to how an electron cannot be. For example, it is not a pure vacuum. Let alone the discourse that only quantum vacua exist. This is exactly what I mean, too: a pure vacuum does not contain any existent, not even one quantum of energy. A quantum of energy should be carried by something existent, and not by something vacuous. This quality that it is not a pure vacuum is what I call Extension. Every existent must be in Extension. If extended, it has parts, which are in some Change, too. In short, it is impossible to say that anything termed electron can exist without internal Change, which may be caused externally and/or internally.
Extension and Change are the ways without which nothing can exist. If anything is in Extension-Change-wise existence, this is causal existence: some finite amount of causation happens there. An antecedent changes within itself due to the impact that its parts make and are made to take. It is continuous in the sense that it is continuously the manner of existence of anything, but this is not infinite causation. If anything existent should be such, this shows that all existents are in Causality. This is the pre-scientific Universal Law of Causality. Now clearly, quantum wavicles too should be in causation, if we are speaking of existents, and not of pure vacua.
Historical Problem of Existence: “Being-Becoming” in Discourse and Its Linguistic Elements: Historically, the terms ‘existence’ and ‘being’ have been very confusing. The meanings assigned to them have been varied. I denote by existence the verbal To Be of all that exist in whatever manner they exist. All existents in the cosmos cannot be in intense holographic relation, if (1) the cosmos is of infinite content and (2) any highest limit velocity in any part of the cosmos is finite. Even in this case, there is no problem is speaking of To Be. More than two and a half millennia of Western discourse on existents has been primarily in terms of notions of particular existents and their ways of being, and references to becoming and non-being within the processes of existents. This has been conducted by safeguarding the notion of becoming of otherwise unchangeable substantial beings, from within the way in which language and discourse are the constituting factors although they too evolve. Not that such thought patterns shaped language in its basic evolution. Instead, primarily it was the already existing feeling-, perceiving-, and thinking-contours of language that shaped the thought that bases To Be on particular existents and their ways of being and reference to becoming and non-being. I believe that it is time to permit the contrary manner of basing To Be on Reality-in-total and its ways of being to happen at least in scientific and philosophical language. Later I shall show that the ways of being of Reality-in-total are Extension and Change.
Being / Existence and Permanent Becoming in Parmenides and Heraklitus: Historically, for the evolution of the proper understanding and linguistic formulation of To Be, becoming, activity, stability / permanence, etc. together, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Whitehead have contributed much in the Western tradition: Heraclitus has a way of thinking of becoming, being, firelike continuity of becoming, etc. [Burnet 1924: 61ff] and Parmenides has an unclear manner of combining being, becoming, their self-revealing, self-concealing, etc., [---------] as if being were possible only as an unchanging substance and becoming meant the annihilation of the total identity of the substance. This notion of continuity of identity of everything as substance was for him being / continuity in existence. These notions in Heraclitus and Parmenides have been discussed without end, but without scientifically and philosophically settling (1) the foundations of the questions and without first deciding whether anything exists, (2) what the implications of the notion of existence (the To Be of all that exist) are, (3) how to differentiate between the various tenses of ‘to be’ used in the case of existence, attribution to existents, equality of existents, and equality of attributes, etc.
The Many Genuine and Non-Genuine Senses of ‘To Be’ in Linguistic Use: It is common to read metaphysicians, linguistic philosophers, and linguists speaking of the many contextual meanings of To Be in use in language. They tend then to accept all these senses as genuine, saying that these are given in language. But the foundational senses in which it had to be found in use are not much being discussed, nor is it often recognized that these alone can justify the contextual usages. The contextual is a sort of phenomenology of the use of meanings in language. The foundational is a fundamental philosophical consideration in linguistics, sciences, and philosophy alike.
I enumerate more than a score of the said contextual meanings of ‘to be’, without too much attention to arranging them in their derivative importance, since it is extremely difficult to reason into: (1) exist as a thing out-there and/or within ourselves, (2) exist as a process out-there and/or within ourselves, (3) come into existence as a thing, (4) come into existence as a process, (5) be such and such a thing, (6) become such and such a thing (without attention to its changes), (7) be of such and such a quality or property, (8) become of such and such a quality or property, (9) become such and such a processual thing (acquire the nature of a different form of existence), (10) be the same as, (11) be similar to, (12) become similar to, (13) be true, (14) become true, (15) be taken as true, (16) be possible as existent, (17) become a possible thing, (18) become a possible process, (19) become something possible, (20) be necessary as something existent, (21) be necessary as of such and such a nature (quality, property), (22) be necessary as such and such a thing, (23) be necessary as such and such a processual thing, (24) apply (as a quality or property) to, (25) happen (in a manner), (26) happen as this or that thing (from an already-existent), etc., and (27) a host of the same meanings in the past, present, and future tenses and various modal incarnations.
The Only Fundamental, Guiding, Physical-Ontological Senses of ‘To Be’: The above are some of the linguistic usages of To Be. What about their most fundamental senses, without which language cannot facilitate its own use in philosophy and science? I show that, in its implications, To Be works out to be taken as, but is not the same as, ‘cause to be’ or ‘cause to become’, because Extension and Change, the implications of To Be, together imply Universal Causality. But these implications are the only concepts that language can find as the most fundamental significances of the To Be of Reality-in-total. As I said at the beginning, the only two highest exhaustive implications of To Be are Extension and Change; Extension-Change-wise existence is itself causation; and all existents are causal: hence the pre-scientific Universal Law of Causality.
Respectfully, which esoteric beliefs are the least plausibly true ? Why?
1)Scientific materialism because the fundamental choice to reason, DESPITE UNCERTAINTY, requires more than material. Source:
2)Reincarnation because if every entity is unique, or might as well be due to UNCERTAINTY, then sharing spirits is less likely. Source:
The following are metaphysics for social justice:
As long as harm avoidance and reciprocity are met, education can and should decentralize for the sake of diversity, equity and inclusion. Sources:
Metaphysics:
Idea:
Code Ohnemus Paradigm
More Detailed Ideas:
Preprint Education for an Automated World
World Orders:
When God sends me difficulties to deal with, my philosophy and faith should be the worse possibility for me is death and after I finally die, I get eternal salvation, because that philosophy is the most parsimonious.
How can the following film help bring social justice? Elaborations welcome.
Respectfully, at least the modern version of liberalism is the natural result of the equality thesis that still acknowledges heritability to further diversity, equity and inclusion. Whereas conservatism directly denies heritability or dodges the question. Also conservatism does less to oppose racial animosity. Hence why liberalism usually wins being both more fair and more sustainable. Also the metaphysics of liberalism(universalist Christianity) are stronger. Plus Universal Eternal Salvation is the most parsimonious afterlife.
Sources
Who agrees both the lack of absolutes and the uniqueness of each entity, suggest an all knowing and all powerful creator? I welcome elaborations.
What are the possible consequences of an unethical act? Why? How? My answer: 1) The unethical actor gets what is deserved. 1.5)The unethical actor continues the patterns until getting what is deserved. 2)The unethical actor lives in fear until getting what is deserved. 3)The unethical actor is punished in the afterlife. 4)The unethical actor at some point repents. 6)The unethical actor’s own happiness is damaged by having committed the unethical act. 7)The unethical actor creates a precedent damaging self interests. 8)Something else.
Who agrees heaven may be more interesting than hell because individuality possibly is kept in salvation more so than in damnation? How? Why? Stimuli:
Who agrees the uniqueness of each entity suggests both an all knowing and all powerful creator and against reincarnation? Elaborations welcome.
My answer: I agree the uniqueness of each entity suggests both an all knowing and all powerful creator and against reincarnation. My elaboration: an all knowing and all powerful creator could make each entity unique without an identifiable arche. The uniqueness of each being suggests no being shares spirits, thus not supporting reincarnation. Plus, the lack of absolutes suggests no guiding force exists to guide reincarnation. Thus, the most likely afterlife is a Universalist Christian Heaven. Source:
Who agrees deduction practically begins theology and epistemology? How? Why?
My answer: I agree deduction practically begins theology and epistemology because so many answers are unknown, thus deducing is a useful method. Stimulus:
As far as I know, these ideas have been used mainly in theological discussions. However, it seems to me that such ideas would also have application in more general discussions of Cartesian dualism and the mind–body problem, e.g. they could be used to describe what happens to the Cartesian soul or mind when one is sleeping dreamlessly or when one is unconscious.
Respectful Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Question:
Respectfully, who agrees that if a metaphysical belief is unfalsifiable yet, is parsimonious, rational and compatible enough with objective reality for survival at the individual, group, and general levels, then those metaphysics are reasonable to believe? How? Why?
For the sake of social harmony and cohesion, I will keep my more metaphysical questions to myself and or academia, and I will try to follow the golden rule(treat others how I would like to be treated) and hope that others do the same. I will try to follow tradition, then risk analysis, then skin in the game for my ethics while obeying the legal system and upsetting people only when necessary for survival.
Heidegger might interpret "2001: A Space Odyssey" as a philosophical exploration of humanity's relationship with technology, the challenges posed by advanced tools, and the transformative journey of self-discovery in the face of the unknown. The monoliths, as enigmatic tools, disrupt conventional understanding and beckon humanity to transcend its limitations.
Space Odyssey Through Heidegger's Lenses
- Instrumentality and Technology:Heidegger distinguished between "ready-to-hand" and "present-at-hand" in his analysis of tools. When a tool is ready-to-hand, it is seamlessly integrated into our activities, and we use it without actively thinking about it. However, when a tool becomes present-at-hand, it becomes an object of contemplation in itself. In "2001: A Space Odyssey," the monoliths can be seen as tools that challenge human understanding, pushing humanity to confront its place in the cosmos. The monoliths disrupt the ordinary way of being and force humans to question their existence and purpose.
- Enframing and Alienation:Heidegger's concept of "enframing" (Gestell) refers to the way in which technology frames our understanding of the world. Technology, according to Heidegger, can lead to a form of alienation, where humans view the world solely as a resource to be exploited. In the film, the advanced artificial intelligence HAL 9000 represents a form of technology that, when it malfunctions, poses a threat to human life. This can be interpreted as a cautionary tale about the potential dangers of unbridled technological advancement and the need for humans to maintain control over their creations.
- Journey and Becoming:Heidegger's philosophy often involves a sense of journey or quest for authenticity. In "2001: A Space Odyssey," the space voyage represents a literal and metaphorical journey into the unknown. The encounters with the monoliths force humans to confront the limitations of their understanding and to question the essence of their being. The journey becomes a process of self-discovery and transformation.
- Transcendence and Openness:Heidegger emphasizes the idea of "Being-toward-death" and the need for individuals to confront their own mortality to live authentically. In the film, the monoliths may symbolize a form of transcendence or a call to a higher understanding. The encounters with the monoliths disrupt the ordinary and open up new possibilities for human existence.
- Ambiguity and Unconcealment:Heidegger often spoke of the importance of embracing ambiguity and the hidden aspects of reality. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is known for its ambiguous narrative and open-ended conclusion. The monoliths, like Heidegger's concept of "unconcealment," serve as catalysts for unveiling hidden aspects of the human condition, pushing humanity to grapple with the mysteries of existence.</