If constrain begets constraint, then what begat the first constraint?
Oh I forgot. Must be God. — apokrisis
Possibility itself will eliminate its own variety just by trying to express its every alternative at once. That is the essence of constraints-based causal self-organisation. — apokrisis
Nope. It pats you on the head and points you in the direction of the better alternative you've been ignoring. — apokrisis
You still don't get it do you? Possibility doesn't do anything. It is not actual, it cannot do anything, by definition. — Metaphysician Undercover
That is really the issue with MWI of QM. See how this premise leads to irrational ontological principles? — Metaphysician Undercover
Don't you think that if a higher order principle could be discovered by a more evolved living creature, that higher order principle must be already in essence knowable? We are all evolving living beings, and knowledge advances. No one knows when the higher order principle will be found, but we must keep striving to find it, and this takes effort. But if we posit as a first ontological principle, that the foundation of being, existence, is itself unknowable due to some sort of vagueness, then we will not be inclined to make the effort to find that higher order principle, assuming that such is impossible due to that inherent unintelligibility. — Metaphysician Undercover
In physics, we have got used to considering possibilities as "virtual particles". So the possibilities we can count - as in quantum mechanics - are also "actual" in a special way.
This isn't empty metaphysics. We can actually measure the physical contribution that a cloud of ghostly possibilities adds to any physical property. It is why the vacuum has an irreducible zero point energy, why the magnetic moment of the electron has an added quantum correction. — apokrisis
So I'm not making shit up. Our most accurate theory of nature forces us to take a constraints-based, sum over histories or path integral, view of material being. We can count the effect that unlimited possibility has on the actuality we then measure. — apokrisis
Your alternative account - a classically-inspired tale - is experimentally proven as wrong. — apokrisis
Well MWI is just an interpretation of these proven facts. It is one way of preserving the kind of classical metaphysics you also hold dear. Just as you say you have no choice left but to believe "God did it", so MWI-ers say they have no choice but to believe every virtual possibility must then be something really happening in some other actual world (or mumble, mumble, another branch of the infinite wavefunction). — apokrisis
Again, a logic of vagueness is the way out of this metaphysical impass. — apokrisis
I see no issue to call such a previous state unintelligible / vague, — Gooseone
But physicalists, like yourself, seem to have a deep fear of God, and will posit any of a vast number of irrational principles in order to avoid what is logically necessary. — Metaphysician Undercover
It's fine to say "I don't have the foggiest idea", but that is not what is happening here. What is being suggested is that out of nothingness matter magically sprung (the Big Bang), and out of matter Mind magically sprung. That is not vagueness. That is a a pretty definite mythology born out of a specific goal to obliterate the notion of Mind. — Rich
feel the need to invoke some sort of elan vital to make it happen — Gooseone
No, but you do need to invoke some faith that "mind just happened", because that is all there is. — Rich
We kind of know that another mind just happened due to the growth of a nervous system, don't we — apokrisis
I said I find it likely that mind emerges out of matter. — Gooseone
I can agree with that but the issue here is the knowing. People adhered to the law of gravity by sticking to the ground before we started to share theories of gravity or even gave it a name, I see no issue to call such a previous state unintelligible / vague, I don't take that as a hard limit on what we can know metaphysically in the future. Inclinations, making efforts, for all I know they could also be something we will have a very different understanding of in the future, just like we did in the past. — Gooseone
I was under the impression that the context in which Apo used the term "unintelligible" had more to do with how things would be if brains weren't perceiving stuff. (As opposed to those who feel there is something 'higher', like knowing without a knower, awareness being really 'REALLY' special, etc.) — Gooseone
Not to get into the: "If a tree falls into the forest....bla bla", but for now I find the whole concept of intelligibility a human thing. Things might exist and the way this stuff behaves might very well be intelligible but if there isn't anything resembling human cognition perceiving it I can just as well call it unintelligible. — Gooseone
You say it yourself, you need a capacity to understand for things to become intelligible, it's my opinion we need something resembling human cognition to do so and I feel 'that' is something very physical. — Gooseone
Would a child in grade school, who can't understand algebra be correct to say that algebra is unintelligible? Would someone in high school be correct to say that university level physics is unintelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think you've really thought through what it means for the PNC to fail to apply. Vagueness is defined by it not being actually divided by a contradiction. It is the intelligible which is the crisply divided. — apokrisis
For the child in grade school algebra would indeed be unintelligible, this points to the narrow framework we have to make sense of things. — Gooseone
This narrow framework we are operating in in this thread seems to be the one of the known unknowns where Apo points to the lower end where we can fathom things becoming unintelligible (we do not assign agency to ants yet when we look at the behaviour of an ant colony it can appear to behave intelligently, still we don't assume ants are intelligent) and others point to the higher end where we can fathom more things becoming intelligible (assigning anthropomorphic qualities to the universe, believing in god, having faith in human progress, etc). — Gooseone
When we're talking about, say, physics, we(!) are able to determine various causes for what we see and I do not find it inappropriate to state that some things "just happen" (with the caveat that you're looking at something in a specific framework, still, no need to explain the universe to bake an apply pie). — Gooseone
Being able to fathom everything being intelligible to an intellect does not mean it will be so per se. As Apo mentions, you seem to exclude the possibility for unknown unknowns which are, at this moment, unintelligible. And, if you are excluding the possibility for unintelligibility and claim that everything can, in principle, be intelligible, do you then also believe we have the potential to become god-like? — Gooseone
When the PNC does not apply, it is and it is not. — Metaphysician Undercover
Also I have not read this thread as thoroughly as might have been proper so I have not seen Apo claim an Apeiron as a fundamental and absolute scientific truth. — Gooseone
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