why can the Cosmos itself not be the uncaused cause of all things? — Janus

One intuitive observation is that there is nothing that is known that is its own cause. What would it mean to say that something ‘is its own cause?’ Is there anything like that in experience? So saying the cosmos is 'its own cause' basically is saying 'it just is'. Whereas if you retrace the steps of the philosophical tradition, it always starts with 'how or why can it be this way? What causes it to be this way?'

Actually I thought some more about your questions to me - about my 'meta-philosophy'. Without launching into an epic, my quest still is, and has always been, about the idea of enlightenment. Even The Enlightenment was about enlightenment! Except for in that case, there was a (sometimes tacit) agreement to seek for it in any terms other than the religious, for the reasons that you yourself frequently articulate: scepticism of the idea of there being a higher truth or any form religious authority. That anti-religion is what I say is a cultural meme found widely in Western culture as a kind of reactive scepticism.

But what I am seeking, or the way that I understand the term 'enlightenment', is more to do with the transformation of perception - a radical re-ordering of the way we see the world. We spoke before about experiences under entheogens - it is like that, with the caveat that it can't be obtained by artificial means, on account of those experiences always being transient, and also the consequent lack of ability to integrate the insight into real life. But I see the spiritual quest in terms of penetrating or overcoming some fundamental error or problem in consciousness. That is where it is much more like a form of gnosticism, as 'gnosis' comprises exactly that seeing-through or enhanced understanding or a radical re-ordering of consciousness. (This is why, indeed, Richard M. Bucke's book Cosmic Consciousness does provide a model for the idea and why I still think it is fundamentally sound.)

So my counter-cultural understanding is that this was what 'religion' was originally about, or at any rate, that element of transformed understanding was the only aspect of it that is really worth anything. But these fundamental insights then got incorporated into the various mythologies and tropes of the culture in which they finds themselves, and then they become understood in terms of such tropes - and then it becomes part of the problem and no longer part of the solution. That is what happens with the formation of religious authority - it's a process of ossification (you see that in the agrarian symbology of the Bible, 'flocks' and 'the blood of the lamb' and the other anachronistic symbolism it contains). Originally there is a mind-transforming insight or radical vision but it is then passed down to others who don't truly understand it, or incorporated by the elite for political reasons, it becomes the basis of social or political power, and then it is no longer radical but ultra-conservative. This is observable throughout history and culture.

So - how that relates to physics, metaphysics and philosophy, is that from the outset, that 'sapiential' or gnostic dimension was actually part of the vision of philosophy. The Parmenides contains references to non-dualist realisation and states of samadhi (which are explained in detail in McEvilly's The Shape of Ancient Thought). Without that background understanding, none of it makes any sense whatever (and even his contemporaries struggled to understand it, which is what the dialogue is about). Even a lot of what is said about it in philosophy class - and I did study it formally in the unit on Pre-Socratics - completely misses the point that the Parmenides is referring to something very much like what Bucke described in the case of sages and 'realised beings' (what with the allusions to the 'plain beyond day and night' and the vision of the goddess.) It is about a completely different frame of reference, an entirely different state or way of being. It's that idea of 'realisation' or 'self-realisation' that you still find in the Vedantic sages like Ramana. But where is that, in Western culture? (For comment, see Camille Paglia, Cults and Cosmic Consciousness.)

Anyway - I don't expect agreement. These thoughts have come up in response to your questions, as to what got me into posting on forums in the first place, what my meta-philosophical outlook is. Most secular philosophy, so-called, has arisen in reaction against religious dogma, but in doing so, it has also been inoculated against the original vision which still might be preserved under the layers of dogmatics, which is why it so frequently results in nihilism, as it ends up being the rejection of the very idea of meaning. (This was the theme of Theodore Roszak's book Where the Wasteland Ends which was another formative text for me.) So, anyway, life goes on, I have to work out ways to actually try and incorporate this understanding in the day-to-day, otherwise it might all turn out to have been the fantasy that many will say it must have been. I really don't think it is, mind you, but there has to be a chance that it is; that is part of the game. :-)

In your kind of model the radical vagueness or indeterminacy is not only "there" at the beginning of time but "always", no? It is the eternal out of which the temporal forever emerges? Do you presume it to be radically indeterminate in itself or merely for us? — Janus

Can one point to what ain't there? Sure. People do it all the time when it comes to negation. From our vantage point - observing from our state of determinate being - It can be crisply determinate that some thing doesn't exist.

Vagueness is then just the same, just more extreme. We are pointing to the very lack of crisp being, the very lack of any determination in any form or material degree, and giving it a name.

For you to talk about what it is "in itself" is already smuggling unwarranted definiteness into the concept of the vague. Old habits may die hard, but questions about whether the vague is inside or outside time, inside or outside space, inside or outside energetic action, are all queries that can only make sense if you presume the distinctions could even apply in intelligible fashion. But the definition of vagueness would be that they don't. As Peirce said, vagueness is that to which the principle of contradiction fails to apply.

So to point to vagueness, we have to "point" at that which is unspeakable in lacking intelligibility. But we can then say some very precise things about it on the presumption that the intelligible itself had to "exist" within that vague grounding potential as the intelligible is clearly what has emerged out of it. The PNC does apply to the existence we know, to the degree it has a crisply developed state - a state composed of its definite presences and definite absences.

If there is no time, then emergence, which is a type of change, is impossible. So it doesn't make any sense to say that there was potential before there was time, — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm saying time emerges. A global temporal organisation emerges as a symmetry breaking (or indeed, a series of them in which time takes on an increasingly definite and classical character).

I mentioned earlier the current cosmological modelling of the Planck scale in terms of relativistic anomalies. The first moment - before there was any proper distinction between gravity and the other forces - was a hot soup of blackholes and wormholes. Spacetime - in any sense that it existed - was so curved and disconnected that we can only understand it in terms of features like time wormholes where past and future did not yet exist. There was no forward and backward direction wired in, so time might as well be going in one direction at one point, a different direction at another point.

So on the basis of the known physics, this is our best retroductive description of the earliest conceivable state.

Now you can ignore what the physics suggests on this score. But I prefer to let the available evidence inform the metaphysics. Especially when on logical grounds, Peirce had already set out the machinery of this kind of radically emergent ontology.

For you to talk about what it is "in itself" is already smuggling unwarranted definiteness into the concept of the vague. — apokrisis

OK, so obviously the concept of the vague is the concept of the indeterminate. Are you saying that the vague itself is something other than the concept of it? If you say it is then it follows that there is a vague as we conceive it and a vague in itself. In that case it would seem to follow that the vague in itself must be indeterminate. Or would you say that it is neither determinate nor indeterminate, neither vague nor not vague?

The vague is to be understood as dichotomous to the crisp. So if we understand what it is to be determinate, then we can understand what can be said about its “other”.

The problem here of course is that you are still trying to make sense of this in terms of one kind of thing becoming its other thing - a dualistically disconnected story of vagueness completely disappearing and crispness completely replacing it, as though the two can’t exist simultaneously.

But my logic is that of a triadic or hierarchical development. So what emerges by a dichotomous separation is the clarity that all structured being lies defined by these two absolute limits - that of the vague and the crisp.

Vagueness emerges also in a retroductive fashion as something now made definite by the emergence of the crisp. So while you might want to arrange them as the start and the end of being - and that may be the temporal story that emerges as the crisp develops, and the vague becomes clearly that which was left behind - the big picture is the vague only has “existence” in a sense relative to what we mean by a definitely structured existence.

I think the problem is the same for the "crisp". Is the crisp something other than the idea of the determinate. Or in other words is anything determinate in itself or only determinate for us? I understand that you are conceiving of crispness and indeterminacy as the two absolute termini of a continuum along which neither crispness nor vagueness are pure, but that's not what I'm concerned with. If neither vagueness nor determinacy can be precisely defined or determined then it would seem that we are face with an eternally recurring fudge factor.

So what emerges by a dichotomous separation is the clarity that all structured being lies defined by these two absolute limits - that of the vague and the crisp. — apokrisis

It seems to me that insofar as structured being can be defined it is defined in crisp terms. It doesn't make much sense to me to define something in vague terms; a vague definition is not a definition at all precisely to the extent that it is vague. On the other hand I can see how something could be evoked in vague terms, but that is different matter, to do with aesthetics, not knowledge.

Say you believe that prior to the BIg Bang there was a "sea" of quantum fluctuations. or some such. Would that be a state of absolute vagueness? Would there be any determinacy in that? Or would there be any determinacy in anything at all independently of us? An undetermined determinacy perhaps?

One intuitive observation is that there is nothing that is known that is its own cause. What would it mean to say that something ‘is its own cause?’ Is there anything like that in experience? So saying the cosmos is 'its own cause' basically is saying 'it just is'. — Wayfarer

We know only parts of the Cosmos, we never know, or even could know, the whole. The parts we know are arguably known to us in causal terms, that is they are intelligible only insofar as we understand them to have sufficient reason(s) for their existence. Sufficient reasons for the existence of something must lie outside the thing. If nothing lies outside the Cosmos (by definition) then we cannot say the Cosmos has any cause that lies outside itself. It is a special case. We might want to say there is a creator that lies outside the Cosmos, that is the sufficient reason for the Cosmos. But why could the Cosmos not be self-creating if the purported creator could be?

Except for in that case, there was a (sometimes tacit) agreement to seek for it in any terms other than the religious, for the reasons that you yourself frequently articulate: scepticism of the idea of there being a higher truth or any form religious authority. That anti-religion is what I say is a cultural meme found widely in Western culture as a kind of reactive scepticism. — Wayfarer

I don't understand why you call it a "reactive scepticism". Skepticism is a natural outcome once knowledge reaches a certain point. The ancient Skeptics saw that there is no foundation for any absolute or metaphysical claims, so they concluded that the natural state of humanity is to be in a constant state of inquiry. They were so consistently skeptical that they didn't even rule out the possibility that certain knowledge might be found. However with that admission I think they were just trying to avoid being called inconsistent; and really they showed that there is no possibility of absolutely certain metaphysical knowledge; we can have only conventional "certainties". the problem of the "criterion" sees to that.

But what I am seeking, or the way that I understand the term 'enlightenment', is more to do with the transformation of perception - a radical re-ordering of the way we see the world. We spoke before about experiences under entheogens - it is like that, with the caveat that it can't be obtained by artificial means, on account of those experiences always being transient, and also the consequent lack of ability to integrate the insight into real life. — Wayfarer

I have never denied that there can be "states of samadhi", but the metaphysical import of the possibility of such altered states of consciousness is precisely what is in question. Entheogenerated experiences are transient, to be sure, but they are much more sustained than any other experiences of the numinous I have had. I think it is a matter of brain chemistry; there is only so much serotonin or dopamine; and entheogens cause a massive flood of these neurochemicals which probably can be achieved (to the same degree anyway) no other way. Or even if it can be achieved other ways it must still be subject to the same subsequent depletion of those neurochemicals as is the case with psychotropics. So all such experiences are transient: I don't see any reason to believe in the possibility of constant samadhi.

Yet, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with having faith that there is such a possibility and living your life accordingly if that is your wont. I just think it would be in the interest of intellectual integrity and honesty to oneself to acknowledge that it cannot ever be more than a matter of faith, unless and until I can directly experience the reality of constant samadhi. And even then it would not be impossible that I was deluding myself, or had become a 'false prophet'. How many so-called "Gurus" have deluded themselves and others? How would any of us ever be able to tell the difference, or follow anything other than what 'feels right" to us personally. This is the ineradicably subjective nature of the spiritual quest, and what I like about Christianity is its (sometimes and in some places at least) frank acknowledgement of this fact.

I'm saying time emerges. — apokrisis

Do you agree that emergence is a type of change? And doesn't change require time? If so, then it is impossible that time could emerge (come to be as the result of a change0.

Now you can ignore what the physics suggests on this score. But I prefer to let the available evidence inform the metaphysics. Especially when on logical grounds, Peirce had already set out the machinery of this kind of radically emergent ontology. — apokrisis

If "the physics" is contradictory then of course I will ignore it as unintelligible nonsense. But I really don't think that "the physics" suggests that time emerges, I think that this is just undisciplined metaphysics.

Here's an analogy. I have met different people who have ideas, even plans for types of perpetual motion machines, electric cars which can recharge their batteries from their own forward motion, and things like this; machines that produce enough power to do work and also recharge their own source of energy. These people are uneducated in basic high school physics, not understanding the basic laws of conservation. We try to convince these people that their ideas won't work, without ridiculing them, but they just can't seem to understand that their ideas contravene fundamental laws of the field in which they are speculating, physics.

Likewise, there are people who are highly educated in science, who have not been educated in the broader field of philosophy. They have not been disciplined on issues of human consciousness, the nature and history of ideas, concepts, the human will, judgement, ethics and morality. Some of these people will venture into metaphysical speculations without the proper training. They may put forward ideas which contravene fundamental principles, like the cosmological argument. We must explain to these people, trying not to ridicule them, that their speculations are a meaningless waste of time because they contravene this fundamental principle, the cosmological argument, just like we have to do this for those who dream about machines which contravene the law of conservation of energy. It is simply a matter of undisciplined, uneducated speculation, when you put forward ideas, schemes which contravene fundamental principles of the field in which you are speculating. How do we convince these people of this without ridiculing them?

Do you agree that emergence is a type of change? And doesn't change require time? — Metaphysician Undercover

Time is change with a general direction. That general direction is what emerges due to symmetry breaking. So time does not pre-exist change as such when there is only change, or fluctuation, lacking in a general direction.

I think the problem is the same for the "crisp". — Janus

That was my point. Folk take crispness for granted. The PNC applies without a second thought. I am saying it will always be relative to a point of view. So we sit in the middle of existence and act as if it is completely crisp or determinate. We don’t even consider that it never could be completely as vagueness is always an irreducible aspect of the very existence of any determinism. We only know the crisp in terms of an empirical lack of vagueness. So the vague is what we vanquish by measurement. And measurement is never complete when you are inside the world needing to be exactly measured.

It seems to me that insofar as structured being can be defined it is defined in crisp terms. It doesn't make much sense to me to define something in vague terms; a vague definition is not a definition at all precisely to the extent that it is vague. — Janus

Isn’t that why Platonism ran into problems? We can imagine the ideal triangle. We also accept that no actual triangle would be so perfect. So we can imagine the structure (of symmetries) as being perfect and ideal. And then any material incarnation of those structures is going to be only a material approach to that ideal limit. It will be always vague or uncertain that the ideal has been met.

Say you believe that prior to the BIg Bang there was a "sea" of quantum fluctuations. or some such. Would that be a state of absolute vagueness? Would there be any determinacy in that? Or would there be any determinacy in anything at all independently of us? An undetermined determinacy perhaps? — Janus

You keep trying to trap me into talking your way - where vagueness is understood as something dualistically independent. And of course that way of talking winds up paradoxical. So accept that I am talking in terms of the mutual causation of a dichotomy. The absolute, in being the limit of existence, becomes precisely what can never exist as then it would no longer stand in a mutual relation with its dichotomous other.

You keep trying to trap me into talking your way - where vagueness is understood as something dualistically independent. — apokrisis

Not really, I'm trying to find out what you think: I'm talking about a "time" prior to the existence of anything, and asking whether you think that would have been a virtual quantum state, or whether you think it could have been an absolute nothingness. It would seem it was certainly a no-thing-ness.

I don't understand why you call it a "reactive scepticism". — Janus

I thought I had explained that. It is 'reactive' in the sense that it's a reaction against the previous accepted order - something like the dialectic of thesis and anti-thesis, where the thesis was classical theism, and the anti-thesis is scientific materialism. That was why I brought in Nagel's 'fear of religion'. It is practically instinctive.

But why could the Cosmos not be self-creating if the purported creator could be? — Janus

There's an ontological distinction between 'the uncreated' and 'the created' that is understood in the classical tradition. I don't think there's anything like 'the uncreated' in modern or analytic philosophy, although the original meaning of the Apeiron that Apokrisis mentions is:

From the few existing fragments, we learn that [Animaxander] believed the beginning or ultimate reality (arche) is eternal and infinite, or boundless (apeiron), subject to neither old age nor decay, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything we can perceive is derived. — Wikipedia

So it would be reasonable to think that the 'aperion' is not something 'created' - although such ideas were to evolve considerably in the subsequent tradition. But at the end of the classical period, such ideas are still discernable for instance in Proclus:

on the one hand the universe is composed of hierarchically distinct things, but on the other all things are part of a single continuous emanation...from the One [incidentally, 'emanation' is regarded as something distinct from 'creation'.] From this latter perspective, the many distinctions to be found in the universe are a result of the divided perspective of the human psyche, which needs to make distinctions in its own thought in order to understand...

How many so-called "Gurus" have deluded themselves and others? — Janus

Clearly, very many. But there would be no fool's gold if there were no gold; if there were no genuine article, then there would be nothing to counterfeit.

I just think it would be in the interest of intellectual integrity and honesty to oneself to acknowledge that it cannot ever be more than a matter of faith, unless and until I can directly experience the reality of constant samadhi. — Janus

It's not so much living in such a state. It's more that the insights arising from such states are what is significant about them. I think it is what I think 'meta-noia' originally meant:

'Metanoia, a transliteration of the Greek μετάνοια, can be defined as "a transformative change of heart; especially: a spiritual conversion." The term suggests repudiation, change of mind, repentance, or atonement.'

Subsequently it became glossed as 'religious conversion' and categorised along with other religious ideas but I think originally it had that particular meaning i.e. 'transformative change of perception or outlook'.

How would any of us ever be able to tell the difference, or follow anything other than what 'feels right" to us personally? — Janus

There has to be an element of intuition, of what 'feels right'. But there's also a sense in which such truths impose themselves on us, and also a demand that they be sought out. Again - where in the modern curriculum, is taught such fundamental axioms as 'man know thyself?' It's all very well to say that it's up to us - indeed it is in some ways - but at the same time, situating that in the context of the subject of philosophy is important, I think.

Isn’t that why Platonism ran into problems? We can imagine the ideal triangle. We also accept that no actual triangle would be so perfect. So we can imagine the structure (of symmetries) as being perfect and ideal. — apokrisis

Platonism didn't 'run into problems' so much as fall into neglect. And besides, it was just the ability of the intellect to conceive of the beauty of mathematics and symmetries and the ideal forms which became one of the main sources of the very scientific tradition of which you yourself are an advocate. That is arguably why Greek philosophy gave rise to the Scientific Revolution, which Indian and Chinese philosophies did not do, despite the fact that 2,000 years ago, both their cultures seemed much more advanced than the European.

I am taking a constraints based approach. So that would start from a state of unbridled everthingness. It would be action in an infinity of directions, hence a blur of fluctuations with no directions. Then as action started to get organised, form a flow in a limited number of directions - ie: three dimensions - you would start to have a somethingness because all that everythingness had mostly been suppressed.

So that is the general difference. Instead of starting with nothing and wondering how something - something material - appeared for no reason, I take the constraints view were everthing is trying to happen in chaotic and disconnected fashion, and so all that is required is that some form of organisation emerges to limit the chaos and shape it into some recognisable flow of events.

Is human gene data an example of particular form (i.e., the first actuality of an individual human being)?

According to Hoffmeyer & Emmeche, it is inactive, and:
1) Determinate to the extent that it preserves identity through time.
2) Indeterminate with respect to material detail.

Hoffmeyer, J. & Emmeche, C. (1991). Code-Duality and the Semiotics of Nature. pp. 117-166 in: Myrdene Anderson and Floyd Merrell (eds.). On Semiotic Modeling. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin and New York.

Time is change with a general direction. That general direction is what emerges due to symmetry breaking. So time does not pre-exist change as such when there is only change, or fluctuation, lacking in a general direction. — apokrisis

So prior to "symmetry breaking", there is change without direction. This must be disorderly change, change which is not in any way directed. Where does the intent come from, which is necessary to direct change, making it orderly, directed, what you would call "temporal"?

Do you see what I mean? In order that directed change emerges from undirected change, we must assume that something starts to direct it. This directing agent could not be part of the undirected because then it would pre-exist the emergence, and would not actually be emergent. It would be a separate type of existence, like what is implied by dualism.

If you deny the need for a directing agent, then you are only saying that order could emerge out of disorder. This is what I say is a statement made by a person uneducated in the field of study, analogous to a person uneducated in the laws of physics claiming that one could make a machine which powers itself, (perpetual motion). Both of these claims are the result of not having a well-rounded understanding of the relationship between physical existence and time.

If you deny the need for a directing agent, then you are only saying that order could emerge out of disorder. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly right. That is what I am saying. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

Right, that's exactly the uneducated metaphysical speculation I was referring to. It's clearly unprincipled speculations which are completely meaningless, just like speculations about perpetual motion machines. You can discuss it all you want, as if it's a real possibility if you ignore fundamental principles. Perpetual motion requires ignoring fundamental empirical principles, and self-organization requires ignoring fundamental logical principles.

Right, that's exactly the uneducated metaphysical speculation I was referring to. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oddly, you seem happy with what this "uneducated metaphysical speculation" - ie: physics - has to says about perpetual motion machines, but not what it then has to say about dissipative structures.

Try to keep up with the educated view.

So it would be reasonable to think that the 'aperion' is not something 'created' — Wayfarer

You are trying to assimilate the Apeiron to a materialist ontology. So you are thinking of causality in terms of constructive action - everything starting with a material/efficient cause. And so, metaphysically, the question that the Milesian first philosophers were trying to answer was "what fundamental substance is reality made out of?".

Some dude says water must be that ur-stuff. Some other dude says it must be air. Everyone seems to be after the primal element, and so Anaximander is just talking about this other kind of stuff - the inexhaustible Apeiron.

But pay attention. He was talking about the boundless. He was characterising a naked potentiality that is logically all that would remain after all constraint was removed. So now creation becomes constraints-based, not construction-based. It starts with formal and final cause, not material and efficient cause.

It is a fundamentally different way of thinking about creation. We don't start with some uncreated stuff - the material required to construct. We start with the structural limitation of the unformed and the undirected. We begin with the process of reining in possibility itself so as to start to have a material world that expresses the intelligibility of form and finality in its existence.

Sure, construction quickly follows. Indeed, some form of constructive material activity is going to have to be there pretty much from the start. History has to begin by freedoms being physically disposed of in a fashion that makes the past materially concrete.

But you can only understand Anaximander by flipping your understanding of how creation works. It doesn't start with some ur-stuff that then gets busy for some reason, but with some ur-constraint on possibility itself. Materiality is what arises from this.

So the Apeiron is not an "eternal and inexhaustible stuff". To try to understand it as a pre-existing building material is to completely miss the point.

You are trying to assimilate the Apeiron to a materialist ontology. — apokrisis

Not guilty, your honor. I was simply commenting on the fragment I quoted from. I never said nor implied that he meant ‘eternal stuff’ - there is literally no eternal ‘stuff’ as all physical matter is compound, temporal and finite - right? Energy might never be created or destroyed, but matter is created and destroyed all the time. So how do you get that I was proposing ‘materialist ontology’ in what I wrote?

The question I have for you is this: why should there be such ‘constraints’ so as to give rise to complex matter, as distinct from formless chaos, out of the so called ‘Big Bang?’ There is that book by Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers which goes into this: ‘How did a single genesis event create billions of galaxies, black holes, stars and planets? How did atoms assemble - here on Earth, and perhaps on other worlds - into living beings intricate enough to ponder their origins? This book describes the recent avalanche of discoveries about the universe's fundamental laws, and the deep connections that exist between stars and atoms - the cosmos and the microscopic world. Just six numbers, imprinted in the big bang, determine the essence of our world, and this book devotes one chapter to explaining each.’

Do you think that there’s any relationship between these ‘six numbers’ and the ‘constraints’ you’re referring to?

I thought I had explained that. It is 'reactive' in the sense that it's a reaction against the previous accepted order - something like the dialectic of thesis and anti-thesis, where the thesis was classical theism, and the anti-thesis is scientific materialism. That was why I brought in Nagel's 'fear of religion'. It is practically instinctive. — Wayfarer

I don't agree; scepticism is not predominately reactive but simply a timely questioning, and finding wanting, of what has been previously taken for granted. Someone who questions and loses faith in the deliverances of religion has no need to fear it. If there was fear it would likely mostly be on account of deep anxieties which have been culturally inculcated, and cannot be entirely eradicated even with a change of intellectual perspective.

So it would be reasonable to think that the 'aperion' is not something 'created' - although such ideas were to evolve considerably in the subsequent tradition. — Wayfarer

But, why should we think there is no uncreated or unmanifest aspect of the Cosmos?

Clearly, very many. But there would be no fool's gold if there were no gold; if there were no genuine article, then there would be nothing to counterfeit. — Wayfarer

I don't think this follows at all. What you say entails that there is real truth in any belief that humans have entertained. Think of alchemy, or astrology for example. What if all gurus are deceivers of self and/ or others? I can't see anything that precludes that possibility.

It's not so much living in such a state. It's more that the insights arising from such states are what is significant about them. I think it is what I think 'meta-noia' originally meant: — Wayfarer

I don't deny that there may be insights that come from altered states of consciousness. whether drug-induced or not, but they need to be thought through and integrated into our daily lives if they are to be of value. There are also heightened affective states which can stay with us and be profoundly transformative. we may associate symbols, metaphors and allegories with those states in order to evoke or re-invoke them, but the symbols, metaphors and allegories are secondary to the feeling I would say.

On the contrary without the affect the symbols are empty; it is the feeling which changes us and gives us a kind of knowledge which is akin to aesthetic knowledge; that is to say it is not cognitive or discursive knowledge. I see you trying to convince yourself that there are "hidden truths" of reason; I have become disabused of this notion altogether. Any truth of reason, or even any merely reasonable proposition, to qualify as such, must be supportable by either logic or evidence that can be corroborated either empirically or phenomenologically.

In general I am not moved by what terms "originally meant". That would only speak to the common-sense notions of the Ancients. I think we have good reason to distrust all common-sense notions , ancient or modern, when it comes to metaphysics.

Do you think that there’s any relationship between these ‘six numbers’ and the ‘constraints’ you’re referring to? — Wayfarer

At the Big Bang, all you had was a cooling~expanding bath of radiation. Too hot for any stability. There was no effective difference between all the different kinds of particles - each particle we know today being just one possible way of breaking the symmetry of the grand unified theory (GUT) force.

So initially, there was very little constraint, apart from the general one of a constraint of action to a three dimensional spatial framework that could in fact cool by expanding. Particles were vanilla in all moving at relativistic speed, all having effectively the same mass, all just being different versions of a generally unconstrained gauge symmetry-breaking. A fluctuation might be quark-like one instant, lepton-like the next. The six numbers weren't yet locking in much by way of stable material identity. It was a hot soup freely flashing through all its modes.

The hard little numbers that stand for the constants are what you would arrive at at the "end of time". It is what all that wildness would look like once it has cooled~expanded and arrived at its classical limit. So the constants weren't there to ensure things got going. They were there in a latent fashion as the values which would be left once all the symmetries got broken down by the cooling~expanding.

The connection between constraints and constants is thus that the vital numbers are emergent from the constrained relations.

The really fundamental constants are the Planck triad of h, G and c which encode - via their various reciprocal or dichotomous relations - the basic attributes of spacetime extent and material action. And being formally reciprocal, the vital number just ends up being 1 - the identity element.

This is rather Platonic as it means we understand them like a shape, a structure, a ratio that is constant. Like a triangle, any material size drops out of the picture. The size of a triangle might as well always be set to 1. It is the structural relationship that defines the existence of the triangle, not its size measured in any material sense.

Rees of course confuses the issue because he mixes up the physical constants that would be mathematically necessary for some kind of cosmos as a dissipative structure, and the "constants" that a particular kind of Cosmos would have to have to be able to result in us as observers of its existence.

So - as usual - constraints also spell freedoms. Aspects of our universe could be regarded as just accidental. And multiverse anthropery applies to the extent that is so. The fine-tuning that gives us life might only exist for some accidental choice of universe.

It is an open question of how much of the contingency will be removed by the progress towards a structural theory of everything. The space of possible existences might be very limited by Platonic-strength principles. Or it might not.

But that is the relation between constraints and constants. Constraints break the symmetry. Constants are the "residue" that is the eventual limit to that symmetry breaking. Constants put a number on the steady balance that emerges when things can't be broken down any further.

The connection between constraints and constants is thus that the vital numbers are emergent from the constrained relations. — apokrisis

That’s not how I read it. The ratios being talked about represent the fundamental conditions and physical relatioships - the constraints - that must exist in order for anything intelligible to condense out of chaos in the first place. I mean, the 'big bang' might just have culminated in nothing whatever; it just seems that it did pan out, in such a way that stars could be condensed from the plasma, then go through their life-cycle and produce the heavy elements. There seems no compelling reason why it should happen that way, and in any of zillions of other ways, nothing would emerge. So in respect of these fundamental constants - the numbers don't emerge out of the order so much as the order emerges out of the numbers.

And that is also why scientific knowledge - the knowledge of the principles according to which matter behaves - is of a higher order. By generalising from observations of patterns you can arrive at abstractions which can then be used predictively. Which is why reason was understood to be of a higher order than simple sense-perception in the classical period. And there you're seeing into a rational order, as evidenced by the fact that synthetic a priori proposition can be true.

Rees of course confuses the issue — apokrisis

Rees himself doesn't engage in any such metaphysical conjecture. But his arguments obviously suggest something like the 'anthropic principle'. That might have been one of the reasons he was awared the Templeton Prize in 2011, for which he was dubbed 'a Quisling' by Richard Dawkins - apparently because anyone with scientific credentials who receives such an honour is comparable to a Nazi collaborator. (But I don't believe he's 'confusing' anything.)

Here's another question: as we have discussed, one of the motivations for the 'multiverse conjecture' is because it appears to deflate the suggestion that the Universe is indeed 'fine-tuned for life'. For instance:

Fundamental constants are finely tuned for life. A remarkable fact about our universe is that physical constants have just the right values needed to allow for complex structures, including living things. Steven Weinberg, Martin Rees, Leonard Susskind and others contend that an exotic multiverse provides a tidy explanation for this apparent coincidence: if all possible values occur in a large enough collection of universes, then viable ones for life will surely be found somewhere.

DOES THE MULTIVERSE REALLY EXIST? (cover story). By: Ellis, George F. R. Scientific American. Aug2011, Vol. 305 Issue 2, p38-43

That always strikes me as an infinitely worse example of 'special pleading' than the argument it is purportedly supposed to defeat.

I don't deny that there may be insights that come from altered states of consciousness. whether drug-induced or not, but they need to be thought through and integrated into our daily lives if they are to be of value. — Janus

it can't be obtained by artificial means, on account of those experiences always being transient, and also the consequent lack of ability to integrate the insight into real life. — Wayfarer

Someone who questions and loses faith in the deliverances of religion has no need to fear it. — Janus

My view also. Although the argument I'm pursuing is not about losing religion per se, but losing a vital metaphysical insight that had become associated with it. But then I know that many people will reject it because it is associated with religion; hence, 'reactive atheism'.

But the anthropic principle is only required if the multiverse is the case. We exist in a universe that just by pure accident had the characteristics necessary to produce observers like us.

So I don’t know what you’re talking about.

No, that’s not quite right. The anthropic principle grew out of various observations that showed that in order for there to be stars, matter, and life, there was a prior order. One of the classic papers was Fred Hoyle’s paper on carbon resonance discussed by Paul Davies in an OP on exactly this point. So if you say that life began by chance in some undersea thermal vent - the question then becomes, how did the vent get there? If you trace the sequence of necessary conditions back, they point to stellar explosions - as you know. But then for stellar explosions to occur, then the carbon resonance has to be ‘just so’ - which all seems to point towards simply ‘the way the universe is’. That is why Hoyle remarked that ‘someone knew we were coming’. Strangely, when I google the phrase ‘anthropic principle’ the web definition that appears is:

the cosmological principle that theories of the universe are constrained by the necessity to allow human existence.

There’s that word again.

OK. So there is your mystical version and then there is the scientific rationalist version.

I'm not sure the anthropic principle applies even with multiverses, let alone our universe.

If I observe a fair die land on a 1 a thousand times in a row, I could reasonably conclude that something must be constraining that die to land in such a way. This is because the chances of it landing on a 1 a thousand times without external influence are astronomically small. But I only know this because I know the probability space well. It's not just knowing that 2, 3, 4, 5,and 6 are also available options (making the probability of a 1 on each throw 1:6), but It's knowing that one of the faces suddenly morphing into a 7 is not an option I need to consider. Without this knowledge of the constraints on the probability field, the probability of getting a 1, even on a single throw would always be astronomically small, because there are so many alternative conceivable things that could happen other than the die land such that it shows a 1.

So how is this so with the universe? In what way does the seeming unlikelihood of our universe ultimately creating life not just indicate our lack of knowledge of the probability field? If we say "this was unlikely to have happened by chance it must be a one in a million", where are we getting the million figure from?

If we say "this was unlikely to have happened by chance it must be a one in a million", where are we getting the million figure from? — Pseudonym

It’s really an argument against the notion that ‘chance’ amounts to a reason or cause.

Think back to Bertrand Russell’s famous essay, ‘A Free Man’s Worship’. It was published at the turn of the twentieth century and was, and is, considered, a milestone in the philosophy of scientific rationalism [in the contemporary sense of that term]. This articulated the notion that ‘man was a consequence of the chance collocation of atoms’ - the exact phrase- a roll of the dice, so to speak, something that occurs ‘by chance’ as distinct from as the consequence of an intentional act, namely, ‘the act of creation’. And that has lodged in the popular imagination as an answer to the question ‘why do we exist’? The answer comes: for no reason. It just happens to be that way; it’s the way it turned out; a ‘brute fact’ as the saying goes. The cosmic crapshoot, as an American might say.

But the anthropic argument raises the question, where does the causal sequence that results in the ‘warm little pond’ actually originate? Does it originate with the coalescence of the solar system from the celestial debris of the previous solar explosion? But then whence the solar explosion? And as it happens, if you trace the causal sequence back, it seems to go right back to the original event - the so-called ‘big bang’ that just happened to culminate in the kinds of matter that forms stars, and the kinds of stars that form matter, and the kind of matter that sparks life, and the kind of life that then likes to argue about ‘what just happened’.

I get that bit, what I don't get is what's wrong with "it just happened". The inconceivability of things 'just happening' seems to be based on a misconceptions that we have some knowledge of the probability field of 'things' such as to be able to assess that any of them 'just happening' must be very unlikely.

Now without determinism, we might well claim to have some knowledge of this field. We could say "look at all the 'things' that happen in the world, none of then 'just happen'. There must be billions of things so the chances of something 'just happening' must be at least a billion to one". But determinism of the type you're talking about - tracing the causes back - takes all this justification away. If we're content that life evolved because of such-and-such a condition, and that came to be because of some constraints at the big bang, then we no longer have a massive collection of 'things' to act as our probability field. We have only one thing that happened - the big bang. So how are we assessing it as unlikely that it should have happened that exact way it did? It's not like we've observed thousands of other big bangs and seen that they all resulted in chaos. We only have the conceivably possible' big bangs of theory, but that leads to the dilemma with the die morphing into a seven. If we include all that is conceivably possible in our probability space then absolutely any event has an astronomically small chance of happening. So the universe seems to be nothing special in this respect, we might as well invoke the anthropic principle to the result of a coin toss.

Without this unlikelihood, the anthropic principle is nothing but storytelling.