In any case, the importance of symmetry to modelling nature seems to be something about which we do not have a choice - symmetry is at work in the General Theory - so there at least I agree with you. — jkg20

Great.

No, no, this definition of "unit" must be rejected as circular, or an infinite regress, and therefore not a definition at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's funny, given a circle is the most fundamentally symmetric type of unit. It stands as the limit to an infinite regress in terms of the number of sides to a regular polygon.

How do we account for the usefulness of pure mathematics in describing and predicting reality? That's a different question, but I'm certainly not convinced that the answer to it requires either mathematical realism or physical realism. — jkg20

Sure. If you read my posts, you will see I am a pragmatist. You’re talking about bread and butter epistemic issues.

But again, do you want to claim that the connection is arbitrary? Do you have reason to believe that nature plays by different structural rules despite the evidence to the contrary?

Yeah. I should have said something catchier like "intra-systemic imposition that responds to no genuine, worldly problematic".

The standard model has its problems and its alternatives/adaptations, and the existence of "gravitons" is contentious — jkg20

... or gravitons aren't even part of the Standard Model yet.

So if you mean by "convinced" "convinced that the Standard Model describes reality as it is in itself independently of our means of modelling it", then no I am not convinced. — jkg20

I'm not asking you to deny that the Standard Model is "only a model". The clue on that score is probably in the name.

The issue here is SX calling particle physics use of symmetry breaking "arbitrary".

So do you think group theory is arbitrary? Are its results contingent in some fashion you can explain?

And is particle physics success in using symmetry maths to account for particle relations arbitrary? When a model fits like a glove, why would we have reason to think that was also merely contingent?

Of course, it could be a lucky accident. No one can deny Descartes his demon.

Not convinced by the Standard Model, hey? You think it might be just a big coincidence?

Sounds legit.

Did you actually contest any of the content of my posts. Must have missed it somehow. :yawn:

Oh please. If mathematical physics tells us that existence is the result of broken symmetry, then who are you to disagree? Get over yourself - your Copernican belief in the worldly problematics that revolve around your Being. Good lord.

You mean that game where the goal, the meta-rule, was to show that no particular rule could hold firm?

Yet, that’d work as prescribed. It would serve the purpose of anti-metaphysicians. ;)

Or put otherwise: there is no 'ultimate symmetry', the breaking of which explains individuation — StreetlightX

In case I left you confused - it does happen - I hope it is clear that symmetry-breaking is what connects a triadic system of symmetries. So the "ultimate symmetry" would be a three cornered structure, if you like.

You have the symmetry of vagueness - a state where (material) contingency and (formal) necessity are differences not making any difference. As Peirce noted, the PNC does not apply.

You have the symmetry of generality - a state where globally there is the continuity that has formally absorbed all possible differences so that they don't make a difference. As Peirce noted, the LEM does not apply.

Then you have that final symmetry of atomistic particularity. Eventually, even constraint no longer makes a difference. Locally, things arrive at the ultimate simplicity of a geometric point, a mathematical identity element, a quantum particle, an informational bit, a semiotic mark, or a fundamental entropic degree of freedom.

Or as the laws of thought would have it, the emergent entity to which the principle of indiscernibles does finally successfully apply.

So symmetry is something to be understood in a formally general fashion - hence why maths is the domain that winds up speaking about it.

But in a holistic metaphysics with a triadic structure, we are talking about three kinds of symmetry-producing limitations. If we pursue symmetry-breaking back to its source, we find it in three types of bounds - Peirce's triad of firstness, secondness and thirdness. Each is a "level" of symmetry - a terminus to a dichotomous "other".

So I think your whole approach mistakes description for prescription, effect for cause: once you suck the life out of problems-in-duration and make the move into a higher dimension where everything can be seen from the perceptive of placing them into neatly-parsed boxes (accidents or necessities? generalities or particulars?), then and only then does development seem to proceed on that basis; but the leap into that dimension is illegitimate: it's simply retroactive ratiocination, the work of philosophical morticians. — StreetlightX

Is there any real effort at thought behind these ad homs?

Sure, there is pragmatism in the weak Jamesian sense of utilitarianism - whatever is good for "someone's" contingent purposes.

But the existence of the ad hoc itself highlights the "other" which is Peircean pragmatism - the metaphysically general kind. Instead of the someone, we are now talking about the generality that is "anyone".

So you can wave the flag for the ad hoc story. It is part of my larger story already. It is precisely the kind of contingency that I am generalising away as the differences that don't make a difference when the intent is to reveal the basic structural mechanism at the heart of existence.

Or put otherwise: there is no 'ultimate symmetry', the breaking of which explains individuation; it only seems that way after-the-fact, once you've illegitimately abstracted the concept from the conditions which gave rise to it; Symmetry is always-already broken in some way: there are generalities and particulars, and even stratified hierarchies of such divisions - all this can be granted - but they develop from the 'bottom-up', even if, once so developed, the higher levels attain a consistency of their own (e.g. category theory as a 'response' to problems in algebraic topology). Explanation occurs in medias res, and not sub specie aeternitatis. — StreetlightX

I've explained this to MU above. And I already pointed out that the Peircean view is ultimately triadic - an orthogonal pair of dichotomies - in that it combines a diachronic view with the synchronic. It is a tale of two symmetry-breakings - the developmental one that goes from vague potential to crisply ordered, and the scale hierarchy one which is the developed crisp outcome, the equilibrium state where the local constructing is in stable balance with the global constraining.

So there is room enough in the triadic view to house all your metaphysical concerns. :)

There is bottom-up atomistic construction, for sure. There is actualised contingency or degrees of freedom, for sure. All the regular stuff that makes reality safe for reductionist thinkers can be found in a world that has developed enough to have attained a stable local~global structure.

Once the world is being held in place by the constraints of its own history, it does look securely classical to the typical human observer, sitting right at the Copernican centre of the story.

And you can join all those who blithely takes this as Humanity's right - to see themselves as the spiritual centre around which the Universe then dumbly and mechanically revolves. It is our own personal desires and values that matter - which should inform material reality. We impose ourselves on nature in some metaphysically rightful fashion as the world itself is just some bunch of ad hoc events, lacking any formal or final causes. What completes existence is us, at the centre, doing our thing of expressing ourselves in some kind of glorious free pluralistic fashion.

Talk about reinventing theology.

Meanwhile, science and maths are just getting on with the job of revealing the deep structure of existence. And the reason why they are working can only be understood once you see how they are simply an expression of a Aristotelian/Peircean holistic structuralism.

Folk are confused because the first fruits of maths and science were the presentation of a classical world - the world of the atomistic, mechanical, local, deterministic, etc. That exploded like a bomb in people's thoughts.

But now it is clear how the classical realm is emergent. It is what you get only as existence develops its generalised habits of constraints and forms a clear local~global structure as constraint eventually produces the grainy local limit where atomistic construction actually starts to be a thing.

So the new project is holism. And mathematical physics is deeply engaged with that. It seems to know what it is doing at least.

Does "one" signify an indivisible unit, or does it signify a divisible unit? Numbers like 2, 3, 4, represent divisible units, 2 representing a unity which is divisible into two distinct units. But 1 when understood in this way must be indivisible. If we allow that 1 is divisible, we undermine the meaning of unity. But we need to allow that one is both a unity and is divisible, so we allow two incompatible, contradictory concepts to coexist within one, being signified within one symbol. — Metaphysician Undercover

Remember that in maths, a unit is defined by the identity element - a local symmetry that can't be broken by whatever operation broke the global symmetry. So 1x1=1. Or A-0=A. The fundamental unit is whatever emerges as the local limit on symmetry breaking. The act of quantification results in a quantity where the action no longer makes a difference. Things finally stop changing. You arrive at a fundamental grain so far as that symmetry-breaking is concerned. Now nature just spins on the spot, quantified in good atomistic fashion.

This is indeed the tale of fundamental particle physics. So maths and physics are talking about the same universal mechanism. Reality exists because there was a symmetry to be broken. And then the breaking of a symmetry eventually also hits some local limit. A new state of symmetry is discovered where the individuating, the differencing, no longer results in a difference. You wind up with a smallest Planckian grain of action.

So geometry begins with the fundamental thing of a zero-d point. Dimensionality cannot be constrained any more rigorously than a dot, a minimal dimensional mark. Having found the stable atom, the concrete unit, the construction of dimensional geometry can begin.

Instead of a holistic metaphysics of constraint - the story of how a unit or identity element could naturally exist at the end of a trail of symmetry breaking - we can flip to the more familiar reductionist task of (re)constructing the world from the bottom-up. We have our unit. We can then start framing the universal laws that then do arithmetic with that unit, building a reality up step by concrete step in accordance with a material/effective cause notion of how the world "really is".

So in the mathematical realm where 1 is the identity element - the unit that is unchanged by the kind of change that more generally prevails - it is both part of that world and separate from it. It has that incompatibility which you point out. And that is because it is a re-emerging symmetry.

Globally, a symmetry got broke by the very notion of a division algebra. Division, as an operation, could fracture the unity of the global unity that is our generalised idea of a continuous wholeness - some undifferentiated potential. But then divisibility itself gets halted by reaching a local limit. Eventually it winds up spinning on the spot, changing nothing. A second limiting state of symmetry emerges ... when our original notion of unity as a continuous wholeness finally meets its dichotomous "other" in the form of an utterly broken discreteness.

So it is the usual metaphysical deal. A dichotomy that finds its fullest resolved expression in the form of a local~global hierarchy of constraint. To bound a world takes opposing poles of being. And this is what both physics and maths have worked out - even if the holism that underpins the successes of reductionism is not itself generally appreciated.

It does seem weird. Even science and maths don't really understand why they work so well - why they get at the basic structure of existence. Everyone thinks it is because of their reductionism. And that is certainly what works in a "pragmatic" everyday sense - when the mechanical and atomistic view is good enough to serve our very concrete human purposes.

But that is why Peircean pragmatism, the original metaphysical kind, is important. Existence is a story of how constraints can tame flux or instability, eventually resulting in the irreducible grain - the fundamental units or atomistic actions - from which a resulting counter-action of mechanical constructability can start.

Bottom-up material/efficient causation can be a thing once top-down constraint has forced everything towards a local limit and a symmetry has emerged there which can be the foundation for more semiotically complex constructions.

It ends up treating the pragmatics as mere accidents on the way to some eternal Platonic story which was there from the beginning — StreetlightX

Not really. If we are talking about a pan-semiotic metaphysics now, the goal is to divide reality into its necessities and its accidents. So pragmatism is about some finality being in play and shaping events in a contextual fashion. Things are individuated by constraints as a matter of top-down necessity. But constraints themselves are open or permissive. They only limit to the degree it matters. Beyond that, the accidental or spontaneous can be the rule. Constraints are only concerned by the differences that would make a difference.

So in terms of metaphysics, the question becomes what is the most universal goal? And one obviously sensible answer is the limitation of instability. If any kind of world is going to exist - given the primal nature of chaotic action - then it has to develop the kind of regularity that gives self-perpetuating stability.

Thus the "Platonic universals" would be an evolutionary story. The need for stability would be selected for just because stability is definitional of what we mean by existing. It would be the first necessity. And the eternality of that form would be an emergent and immanent fact. It would be what gets expressed by the end in the long run.

And then, some kind of stable world having established, this could be the ground for the development of further, more particular, states of constraint. Other more localised purposes, expressed by more complex forms, could arise - stabilising "sub-worlds".

So it would be pragmatics all the way. Constraints to limit dynamics and produce particular states of entification could keep developing in open-ended fashion. In the most universal view, they would be accidental - differences that don't make a difference to the most universal view. But locally, in being further hierarchical levels of development, they would encode the forms that are necessary to that further level of organised and individuated being.

That is the metaphysical picture. Maths then becomes the science that explores the principles of form. It seeks out the structures, the rules, that stand for the necessities - with the accidental part of reality becoming whatever measured values we might insert into some general rule.

Vagueness is for me the ultimate transcendental illusion: it takes a perfectly valid move - the step from particular to general, always motivated by a particular problem (B&C's 'decision points') - and then illegitimately extrapolates that step into what one might call an 'unmotivated generality'. — StreetlightX

I wasn't talking about vagueness in reference to mathematical notions of symmetry. I was talking about the continuity of generality quite specifically.

In Peircean logic and metaphysics, the particular and the general co-arise from the vague. So vagueness is firstness, then particularity would be secondness, and generality is thirdness.

Sure, that makes vagueness a kind of ultimate symmetry - it gets broken by that definite division into the general vs the particular. But here, for the moment, the focus is on the ontic structuralism story - the general or universal constraint that "being intelligible" has on shaping the particular or the local. That is the territory that maths is exploring by abstracting to discover the most generalised forms that limitations can intelligibly take. The question being asked is what is the most primal kind of individuation.

And given your interest in individuation and contextuality, it is odd that you don't see this immediately. The step from the particular to the general is about discovering what context of constraint is causing the particular to be what it is in the first place. From there, one can start to remove those constraints - in a most general fashion - to get down to what is most primal about individuation itself.

It is in generalising away the constraints that individuate that we arrive back at vagueness as a formless and unindividuated ground. But that vagueness is a material potential. And maths focuses on the issue of the forms that could organise that. That is why maths does not talk about energy, just organisation. That is why maths ends up talking in "Platonic fashion" about the finalities that want to be expressed.

For there to be (persistent) individuation, there needs to be (embodied) constraints. So reality has to be actually organised as a material system. But maths targets just the constraints, understood in terms of logical generalities. It imagines them having their own abstracted existence - as a ghostly organising hand. And it is healthy to do this as it is the way that it can focus on what is essential vs what is accidental in our accounts of nature. Pragmatism relies on being able to know the difference - the differences that make a difference vs the differences that don't.

So basically I can agree with you up right up until the point where you invoke unmotivated generality as a Platonic bow to tie the whole developmental story together. It's this very last step that shifts a perfectly rigorous and valid methodology into a procrustean metaphysics that tries to retroactively fit concrete developments into a pre-ordained story. It's just a theological-Platonic hangover/residue that needs to be rejected. — StreetlightX

But this is just you forcing things into a framework you feel you can quickly reject. It's not the story I tell.

Remember the evolutionary principle at the heart of this. For anything to exist in persistent and individuated fashion, it must mean that some primal state of constraint managed to work. Everything else then follows naturally from the fact that instability could develop limitation.

nor about the TOPIC AT HAND, which is to say that the goods of life do not make up for the continuous burdens of life. — schopenhauer1

So what makes that the correct framing of the situation rather than life being continuously stimulating apart from the occasional interruptions?

Oh the burden of deciding what kind of fun to have today. It is truly unbearable!

LOL. You guys.

I agree with the pragmatic angle, but the conclusion seems more Platonic. Each of these particular turns in the history of mathematical thought were "forced" by the need to move from the particular to the general. A constraint that was breaking a symmetry needed eventually to be unbroken so as to move up to the next level of abstraction or generality.

Irrational numbers - following the Aristotelian argument supplied in the paper - can be seen as having to relax the constraint that a number is either odd or even. The argument shows that an irrational number is not definitely one or the other. So a higher degree of symmetry is obtained by removing this constraint as an "obvious necessity".

The same goes for complex numbers - removing the constraint that number lines be one dimensional. And non-Euclidean geometry - removing the constraint that worlds be flat thus parallel lines apply.

Well, for B&C, the important point to note is that nothing in the math itself forced this choice, rather than the other. — StreetlightX

No. The tension here was between the numerical and geometric view - the geometric one representing the presumed continuity of physical nature, the numerical one representing the desire to talk about that in a system of discrete signs.

So you have the continuity of symmetry and the discreteness or individuation that results from symmetry-breaking. And then the metaphysical tension regarding whether to understand acts of individuation as actual discrete ruptures - stand alone existences - or merely contextualised developments, breakings that have only relatively definite existence.

The disturbing thing was that geometry and algebra did seem to be two commensurate or complementary ways of talking about the same world. But eventually the cracks got revealed.

Numbers work as zero-dimensional and non-geometric signs when their physical dimensionality is suppressed or constrained. But to maintain a complementarity between numbers and geometry as maths seeks to advance, gradually the constraints on that dimensionality have to be relaxed in a systematic fashion to keep the two worlds connected as we move deeper towards maths capable of higher symmetry.

So in summary, it does all start in pragmatic acts of measurement - the semiotic trick of giving names to things. We break the continuity of physical experience by imposing a system of discrete marks upon it.

This is the useful trick. The semiotic ability to construct constraints that break the symmetry of the experienced world. And the Ancient Greeks were dazzled by this new Platonic reality that rational geometry opened up. A fundamental connection between discrete number and continuous dimension appeared to be forged.

And gradually the very nature of that trick - even for the physical world itself, the pan-semiotic Cosmos - got revealed. The whole damn world exists as a constraint on dimensionality, a grand tale of global symmetry-breaking and localised individuation.

So maths only ever had one route by which to recover its physical origins. At every turn, it needed to work out what further localising constraint had been added to the deal that could be successfully generalised away. Mathematical advance had to see that a symmetry had been broken, which could then be unbroken to reveal the higher, more abstracted, less particularised, realm that lay beyond.

Go up a level and you could still give names to things. Topology abandoned geometry's definite measurements of length, but still deals in individuated abstracta. Semiotics could still work as the trick.

But the route was always Platonically predestined and necessary. If existence takes definite shape due to constraints, due to symmetry-breakings, then the only way to understand that is by following the path backwards that abstracts away those constraints, unbreaks those symmetries, to reveal how the how show works.

:up:

This brings me to the most important aspect of sense I want to bring out, which is the fact that sense is always motivated or responsive to contexts which makes the 'kind' of sense that it is. — StreetlightX

Pattee makes that biosemiotic point in support of Rosen's argument - that complex systems thus have many descriptions - in this paper ... (I mention it as I happened to be reading it.)

https://sisu.ut.ee/sites/default/files/biosemio/files/irreducible_and_complementary_semiotic_howard_pattee.pdf

Is empiricism of some kind a way out of the Trilemma? — Uber

Infinite chains are truncated at the level of appropriate meaning. — tim wood

I'd say this is key. Eventually we lack reason to continue to doubt because our purposes seem satisfied. In pragmatic fashion, any further differences or uncertainties don't make a difference to the beliefs upon which we are willing to act.

So philosophical reasoning is designed to be as open-ended a tool as possible. Part of the pragmatic equation is that it is useful to be able to keep on asking questions without limit. But then also the open endedness must be matched by a mechanism for achieving closure. And maybe science does a better job of expressing that formally as part of the total package.

Empiricism is a mechanism for limiting doubt and securing belief. It assumes that if questions serve a purpose, then it has to be a purpose capable of being satisfied - at least to the degree necessary for the creation of states of belief that we would be willing enough to act upon.

So the trilemma is like this pragmatic relation opened up to reveal its three essential elements.

Yes, questioning or doubt is open-ended and extends to infinity. That's healthy. It shows that bit of the apparatus is in good working order.

But then also foundationalism must apply. We need to be willing to risk asserting some starting belief. We need axioms that we aren't currently doubting. We also need a closure at the other end of the chain of reasoning thus created in the form of a principle of indifference. We need to know when a purpose is being sufficiently fulfilled and any errors of prediction, or degree of surprise, is simply the kind of fine-grain difference that makes no overall difference for us.

The overall deal is thus circular. Or rather, hierarchical. Knowledge can grow endlessly in principle. The ability to hypothesise and doubt is open by design, so the system can always expand its borders. But knowledge is then anchored by its two bounds - the limits or "event horizons" of purpose and indifference.

The two are reciprocal. That which is irrelevant to a purpose is matchingly a matter of indifference. Globally, our sphere of meaningful knowledge is defined by our largest purposes - the reasons we would have to act as if we believed. And locally, our grain of meaningful doubt becomes the degree to which surprises or exceptions could make a reasonable difference to what we would have done.

The system - empirical rationalism - is thus both open and closed. And so it is dynamical or adaptive - capable of settling on its own self-organising balances.

Can you rephrase and clarify? — chatterbears

It's what I already argued. Contradiction is to be what is expected. Cognition thrives on having alternatives to contrast.

So contradiction is not a fatal flaw like you suggest. It represents the fundamentality of choices that can be "equally good" in context. And so the job of ethics is to strike a reasonable balance.

Self-defense is justified because that living being's rights have been violated and needs to protect itself out of necessity. Well-being is still at work here, as someone's well-being has been diminished. — chatterbears

Well yes. We went over this. Well-being or flourishing is the generic goal. And then the "contradiction" is between personal self-interest and collective self-interest.

Society is founded on competition AND co-operation. It is essential that one does not exclude the other. It is also essential that as local vs global interests, they are fruitfully balanced within an ethical framework.

Eating meat is not a necessary harm in order to survive, therefore it is not justified. — chatterbears

But there are degrees of harm. And perhaps good reasons for recognising that.

Your monotonic absolutism makes it impossible for you to properly envisage that - even if in specific instances, as in killing in self defense, you feel forced to yield the issue.

You allow exceptions to the rule when things get so extreme your rule breaks. I prefer a more logically consistent approach that follows from seeking a fruitful balance of contrasting interests. That maps to reality more smoothly. It is how the real world works.

Which creates an internal contradiction. — chatterbears

And so in turn, a felt natural contradiction that ethical reasoning ought to aim to balance. no?

Like you agreed about self-defence for example.

The proper question would be, "Can a dog survive on a vegetarian diet?" - The answer is yes. — chatterbears

Great. You are consistent with your beliefs. And pragmatically, the modern techno-consumer society allows you to achieve that. There are the products out there now.

My argument was against your OP - where you argued that we should be consistent with our feelings. And what is obvious then is that we all could have different kinds of feeling about the issue of killing and eating animals.

So your initial argument could carry no real weight. Unless you could go on to say there is only one "right" way to feel about these things.

If you simply assert this rightness as some kind of objective moral absolute, then fine. But it lacks any actual reason. It is simply an expression of your personal faith.

And you do tend to respond just like that on a whole range of ethical issues, like slavery, discrimination, etc. You know what is right and expect others simply to agree.

I instead have argued for pragmatic morality. I see moral systems as expressing functional social and biological organisation. Morality evolves for actual good reasons. And that should be the starting point for ethical discussions.

This doesn't mean that our biological legacy should dictate outcomes - we evolved as meat eaters, therefore must remain so. But it does still rightfully inform the debate. If social and cultural choices are more under our control, then that is a thing too. But there is a context to which a final position must respond.

That was what I saw as ironic about your attempt to by-pass reason and invoke the "natural emotions" of compassion and empathy. Those are precisely the kind of evolve states of mind that are functional for an intelligent social creature.

And if we look to social science, we can see that the flip side of these feelings is just as functional - as our intelligence is all about weighing a competing balance of interests. We need to be competitive and co-operative, dominant and submissive, understanding and selfish, as best expresses some overall adaptive state.

So if you are going to look to evolved feelings as a basis to moral rightness, you would need to take both sides of the coin into account. Instead you pick out one aspect of what we naturally feel - the empathetic/compassionate - and then turn that into your absolutist rule.

As I say, I don't have a particular beef against vegetarianism. I won't lose sleep if we all generally head that way as food technology deals with the issues of our habitual taste preferences, the economics of lab meat means it wins on price in the supermarket aisle, and - what really counts - environmental footprints leave us with no other practical choice.

But when it comes to pain and suffering, that too is part of the pragmatic circle of life. For humans, it remains a natural part of the deal as well.

It is a different argument, but take away all apparent hardship and people still suffer. With no real sources of suffering and pain, people start to become hurt and anxious over the thousand trivial things they didn't have the time to focus on before.

Life just ain't simple in the way you need it to be simple to fit your one-sided analysis.

So there are good arguments - based on a balance of reasons - for encouraging a social trend towards veganism. Your OP was not an example of a good argument in my view.

My response to that is that there are no grounds for treating the PLA any more or less heuristically than any other law of nature — MetaphysicsNow

It's off topic, so I'll keep it short, even though it is the topic I'm focused on currently.

Even if all laws are heuristic, the PLA is a principle and so distinct in being foundational to laws generally. There seem to be three such guiding principles - the PLA, the cosmological principle, and the principle of locality. My particular interest here is how they fit together.

The PLA becomes truly mysterious and non-local in quantum physics. The path integral or sum over histories formalism suggests events take the least action path over all their possible states. Quantum gravity would (likely) have to see even time and space as emergent in this manner.

A nice intro is Metaphysics of the Principle of Least Action, Vladislav Terekhovich - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.03429.pdf

As regards the constraints based ontology you talk about, could you expand a little on this and specifically what you mean by "material sponaneity" and "formal limitation"?

Do you regard the formal limitations as capable of evolution, or are they fixed and immutable? — MetaphysicsNow

Again, keeping it short, I am arguing for a holistic metaphysics in opposition to the usual reductionist story. So I am arguing for an Aristotelian "four causes" or hylomorphic understanding of Being. As well as the bottom-up constructing causes of efficient/material causality, there is the top-down constraining causes of form/finality.

This is a systems science or hierarchy theory approach. And with CS Peirce, it becomes a semiotic approach where the top-down becomes understood as the informational aspect of reality, the bottom-up as the material or dynamical aspect of reality.

Peirce added the further critical logical wrinkle of understanding reality as a process of rational development - what we would call today, order from chaos or self-organising criticality. The thermodynamic or condensed matter approach to physical structure. So Peirce added Vagueness as a category of logic, a ground of being. A system crisply organised according to the four causes could have the appropriate kind of "nothingness" from which it could actually arise.

So this all cashes out as a general story where reality is the result of the development of constraints that organise a systems degrees of freedoms (and organises them in the precise evolutionary fashion that causes those freedoms, that resulting play of events, to cause the whole system itself to stably persist).

So it is an autopoietic story, a story of ontic structural realism, a story of dissipative structure, to name-check a few of the expressions of the general idea that might be familiar.

To make the contrast with reductionism - and nominalism, atomism, mechanicalism, etc - the systems view does see laws as "merely" the expression of collective behaviour. Peirce called them habits. But then the collective behaviour exerts the constraints that shape the parts making the system. So there is a cybernetic loop. There is feedback that limits the freedoms of the system's events so that they become the kind of thing that are the right stuff to keep the general show going.

From here, it is easy to see why symmetry principles become the governing factor of existence - hence the cosmological principle. At an almost Platonic level, there are logical forms that chaos cannot avoid falling into. For instance, a vortex or whorl is found everywhere in nature where there is dissipation to be done. It is the least action structure. Similarly for fractal branching.

And this is where logic comes in - as an unavoidable form. Logic expresses a least action principle in that is represents a maximal breaking of states of vagueness or uncertainty. It represents the symmetry-breaking which is a binary yes or no, true or false, present or absent.

And quantum interpretations are now picking up on this angle. Wheeler put it nicely with his "it from bit" papers...

This report reviews what quantum physics and information theory have to tell us about the age-old question, How come existence?

No escape is evident from four conclusions: (1) The world cannot be a giant machine, ruled by any preestablished continuum physical law.

(2) There is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum.

(3) The familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive.

(4) No element in the description of physics shows itself as closer to primordial than the elementary quantum phenomenon, that is, the elementary device-intermediated act of posing a yes-no physical question and eliciting an answer or, in brief, the elementary act of observer-participancy.

Otherwise stated, every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit.
http://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/wheeler.pdf

So it boils down to the idea that logic - as a Platonic-strength limitation on uncertainty or vagueness - can conjure existence into substantial being simply by applying its PLA-style constraints on naked or chaotic possibility.

Lewis and other nominalists/reductionists take a different view of possibilia in treating them as already definite and crisp degrees of freedom. Reality is a statistical ensemble of already concretely bounded alternatives. That assumption is explicit in modal realism's talk of "worlds". And the ensemble view is also what leads many to a Many Worlds Interpretation of QM.

But I am taking the alternative holistic view where possibility is more basic than that. It starts out as pure unformed potential - an indeterminate and unsubstantial vagueness. Then it starts to develop lawfulness or order as all its unlimited variety gets sieved according to a unifying principle of least action. You get a world that evolves into concrete form as it dissipates its early confusion and erases whole constellations of possibilities with every now definite physical event.

If my eye absorbs that photon from a distant star a billion light years away, then that is it. The event fixes a history. Time has been added to in a concrete fashion that forever limits any alternative result.

So we end up with just the one world creating itself by erasing possibilities. You don't have a modal realism/MWI story of whole new worlds being created every time there is a possible logical fork in the road. Instead, localised events are a non-local or contextual collapse of every other alternative.

The mystery of the PLA is that all the other alternatives did weigh in the balance. They were real in the sense that they really were there in a way that just got eliminated in a systematic and forever fashion. Until my eye did decohere that photon, the Universe was that fraction more uncertain. The alternative outcomes still existed as a fuzzy set of freedoms. And QM gives you a way to measure that kind of concrete possibilia. You can see it as a "block" of unrealised choices - the wavefunction.

Anyway, a short post has grown long. These are exciting times for metaphysics. :)

Animals deserve what they can understand and experience. — chatterbears

So does a dog deserve to eat meat? Or would you force it to be vegetarian under your bill of universal sentient rights?

No wonder you won’t extend the vote to dogs.

Similarly, black people should be allowed to vote, as well as women. — chatterbears

And dogs? Surely dogs too.

You would still need to explain why you deserve those rights, but an animal does not. — chatterbears

But if they are human rights, then they are human rights. Your earlier argument was based on natural justice for sentient beings. Emotionally, that is definitely a more powerful approach. Now you just risk leading people into legalistic confusion.

Because in many cultures, especially in the west, we grant these 3 rights to dogs. People can actually get locked up for abusing a dog, so people have recognized that dogs deserve these same basic rights. And that anyone who infringes on the dog's rights should be punished. — chatterbears

So now you are talking about animal rights. Yes, we have created those too. And they are lesser rights that pragmatically recognise the difference in sentience. So that in itself becomes a problem with this legalistic turn in your approach.

So why stop at dogs? Why not grant other animals the same rights as well? — chatterbears

But animal welfare legislation does normally cover other animals. Do you live somewhere where the legislation only applies to dogs?

And I would also argue, you may not even need empathy, but could replace empathy with a foundation for basic universal human rights. — chatterbears

But that is now a far worse argument. All humans may be animals, but not all animals are human. So it would be logically inconsistent to grant human rights to non-human animals.

At least in invoking empathy/compassion, you were providing some kind of affective ground for ignoring the difference.

Now you're just not even trying. — NKBJ

Correct.

These are not arguments, just angry noises.

It was a joke. If science did in fact believe it served some clear cut purpose, philosophy would feel more "ambiguous" about that - even when supposedly being all about clearing up any ambiguity.

Yeah. It is clear from this thread that passionate veganism relies on black and white thought at the expense of relativism and balance.

It's a shame as there are plenty of sound pragmatic reasons for promoting big changes in the standard western diet.

Thus, why the ambiguity inherent in philosophy, as opposed to the clear cut nature of science, — Posty McPostface

From a philosophy of science point of view, that statement seems very disputable.

I think I've read somewhere that a Bayseian approach combined with some kind of idea of self-locating beliefs (i.e. beliefs about which world you are in) can help with this, but I've not dug into it in too much detail. — MetaphysicsNow

Yeah. My distant memory is that Lewis relies eventually on counterpart theory and resemblances. So each of us is individual in our own world. And then there are all the other worlds where I am living a life that is only insignificantly different.

There is no actual identity - as we each represent at least one counterfactual difference in existing in a different world. But we would tend to formulate the same (Bayseian) laws of probability through sharing the near enough identical experiences.

Coin tossing would best be explained by a rule of chance, for instance. We would not resemble the selves that lived in the worlds where every coin toss ever experienced always came up heads.

So causation can be reduced to a subjective ascription. Nothing is either objectively chance or determined, you just happen to be located in a world that either looks that way or it doesn't.

But that's why I prefer a constraints-based ontology where both material spontaneity, and its formal limitation, are real things. It does require then a "weird" view of causality. But physics already has had to accept just that with the finality embedded in the principle of least action. Nature does sum over all of its possible histories to tend towards some optimal trajectory. The alternatives have to really exist, in some sense, so that they can count as that which is (mostly) the actually unactualised.

I get it. You are not a pragmaticist. You live in a world of black and white where morality is objective and absolute.

Philosophical discussion is really a waste of time. You already have all the answers you need as a matter of faith.

But it’s not me that demands your simplistic black and white form of consistency here, is it? It is you that is stuck with that as the dilemma.

Besides, this is about killing for eating. Are we back to eating autistics again here? What is the pragmatic reason for killing mental defectives in your scenario?

Could you expand on the above for my simple mind to comprehend? — Posty McPostface

It’s straightforward. The very notion of something working says there was some purpose being served.

Well, it is the whole purpose of philosophy according to Plato, to want and attain the good through the practice of philosophy. I don't see how any progress within the field of philosophy has emerged in regards to that, — Posty McPostface

Some people might think ethics is the prime purpose of philosophy. Others might target being. Or reasoning.

Because you need to explain why you don't feel empathy for a cow, but you do for a human. What is the trait that differentiates the two living beings? — chatterbears

It’s pretty obvious. Cows don’t have the cognitive capacity for empathy and compassion, let alone a desire for consistent ethical practices.

I haven't read Something Happened. I did reach Catch-22, — csalisbury

I only mentioned it as I happen to be reading it and felt it matched your interest in the inner games people play. I found Catch-22 hilarious as a teen, but laboured when I tried to read it again a few years ago. Something Happened is surprisingly honest about the stuff people think and feel, yet could never risk saying.

Rereading this I find it important that you mention "motivation". Or the desire to do "good" — Posty McPostface

I only said that pragmatism is epistemically closed by the fact some position works. There has to be a purpose that was thus served.

Whether that desire is for the good is another issue. It becomes part of the meta-ethical question being explored. You could take it as foundational - to the degree you have got a clear idea of its antithesis.

Both. I don't quite understand the obsession with picking sides with either/or. — Posty McPostface

It’s a corollary of starting a deductive argument. You have to start somewhere. And a foundational fork in the road is the most definite kind of place to start.

And that is also a reason for pragmatism. If you believe reality starts in the vague, then form is what gets imposed by the dialectic. It does still start in the either/or of a foundational act of dichotomisation. But the goal is then a resolution or synthesis.

But surely even a flawless argument is only true if the premises are secure.

So the gap that omniscience would have to fill lies in the truth of what gets assumed as motivation for your premises.

And then when it comes to the general validity of some topic, like ethics, there are the metaphysical level premises that are always going to be open to question.

Is morality objective or subjective ultimately? Either choice is just a necessary leap of faith to secure some definite further line of argument.

So deduction alone never bridges any epistemic gap. The only hope of at least minimising that gap is pragmatic reasoning - a cycle of abduction, deduction and inductive confirmation that can measurable narrow the divide between what was assumed for the sake of argument, and then how that works out in the long run. Given that the question had some purpose.