The Principle of Universal Explanation (PE): everything must have some explanation (in terms of something else).
The second is:
The Principle of Unexplained Existence (PU): reality in total cannot have an explanation (in terms of anything beyond itself). — lish
Within his argument, Rasmussen defends PE by saying everything we are exposed to in this world has an explanation. While we do not have proof that this is 100% always true, no counter-examples come to mind — lish
The probability of the conclusion being false is much greater than PE being true; therefore, we should deny PE. We are justified in using this deduction based on probability because Rasmussen used the same sort of probability deduction to defend PE. — lish
2. Reality in total cannot have an explanation (PU). — lish
How secure is this premise? Why can't reality in total contain its own explanation? — apokrisis
The Principle of Universal Explanation (PE): everything must have some explanation (in terms of something else). — lish
Within his argument, Rasmussen defends PE by saying everything we are exposed to in this world has an explanation. — lish
The Principle of Unexplained Existence (PU): reality in total cannot have an explanation (in terms of anything beyond itself). — lish
2. Reality in total cannot have an explanation (PU).
— lish
How secure is this premise? Why can't reality in total contain its own explanation? — apokrisis
Why's that? The relation would be that the whole is explained in terms of all that it could produce.
The whole "nothing exists" premise is already defeated by the simple fact that something indeed exists. So any argument that arrives at such a conclusion must have employed false premises.
Now false premises can be useful. They are justification for taking the opposite as being true. — apokrisis
So my own position would be that everything was possible. What needs explanation is why reality - as realisable actuality - is the something that it is observed to be. — apokrisis
That leads to the structuralist thought that not everything can be actual because many of those possibilities would conflict and cancel each other out. So reality does contain its own explanation, its own cause. Actuality is the path integral - the sum over all possibility that limits an everythingness to a somethingness.
If everything could actually cancel, there would be nothing. And we know that isn't true. So we know that everythingness was both limitable, and yet not a complete elimination of the possibility for a resulting somethingness. — apokrisis
Why can't reality in total contain its own explanation? — apokrisis
If explanations must always move in the direction from the complex to the simple, there'll come a point when we'll have hit a wall, the simplest, which would need no explanation at all. — Agent Smith
Self-explanatory: Self-explanatory
— Agent Smith
But what's the explanation? — EugeneW
Some things (should) explain themselves. — Agent Smith
But that doesn’t explain the whole, only what it can produce. — Possibility
But this structuralist thought is not contained in the explanation, but in our relation to it. Without a relation to your position as conscious observer, or mine, there would be little structure to your explanation that everything was possible. We tend to take this for granted in these discussions. — Possibility
To be fair though, most explanations are such that they rely on something exterior, usually more basic, to that which is being explained e.g. Why is the sky blue? Rayleigh scattering. — Agent Smith
This gives me an idea. If explanations must always move in the direction from the complex to the simple, there'll come a point when we'll have hit a wall, the simplest, which would need no explanation at all. — Agent Smith
1. Everything must have some explanation (PE).
2. Reality in total cannot have an explanation (PU). — lish
There would be a hole in space, connecting two spaces that wouldn't be connected otherwise. There would be a hole of nothingness between the two spaces. — EugeneW
:fire:In my systems science/hierarchy theory view, the whole is produced by what it produces. The whole shapes its parts - it contributes the downward-acting constraints. But the parts then construct the whole - they contribute the upward-building material being, the suitably shaped "atomic" components.
So it is a bootstrapping or cybernetic causal model. And if it sounds unlikely, it is at least less unlikely than creatio ex nihilo. — apokrisis
The energy ground state of the vacuum – empty space – is "a sea of virtual particles" (i.e. quantum fluctuations), so thanks for illustrating my point. — 180 Proof
According to quantum mechanics, the vacuum state is not truly empty but instead contains fleeting electromagnetic waves and particles that pop into and out of the quantum field.
In between the walls of the hole would be nothing. Time might stand still on these walls, but in between is still nothing. A hole of nothingness. — EugeneW
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