Presumably, the ground of existence wouldn’t be “spread across time” or “located in the present,” but not temporal in the first place.

So I'd likely agree with you that explanation must terminate in something simple and unconditioned. — Esse Quam Videri

Yes, not temporal, since Eternal, and it perhaps has the ultimate lightness of being, as it appears to have to be the simplest possible in order not to be composite. A problem here to be resolved is that how could it be limited to be the smallest - what decided that, as there can be no deciding for the uncaused eternal.

It seems we can also banish 'Stillness', which is kind of a cousin to 'Nothing', since naught could happen if it were completely still; movement has to be.

So far…

Of Necessity: Ground of Existence, Movement, One (as continuous - gaps of 'Nothing' impossible), unconditioned/undesigned, Eternal, Simplest, causeless, energetic, permanent, forms temporaries.

Impossible: 'Nothing', 'Stillness', Composite, 'Designed/Conditioned', Temporal, 'Infinite Regress', 'God', cause, doesn't do anything.

Perhaps further clues to its nature can be found in the temporaries that the Permanent spawns…as if it ever seems to have broken symmetry as it being the perfect instability…

The basic temporaries, such as the elementary 'particles', form in pairs - matter and anti-matter, as well as the positive kinetic energy of stuff countering the negative potential energy of gravity overall, and more.

The base Something appears to be a Sum-thing.

Any more clues?

Maybe one would disagree that there needs to be anything at all, there could have been nothing, but we just happen to exist. — QuixoticAgnostic

@Esse Quam Videri

'Nothing' cannot be, for 'it' has no it - no properties; therefore 'it' cannot even be meant and so 'it' isn't an option.

Therefore, since there is something, the base uncaused existence is ever, this meaning that it is eternal and still here. It is the Fundamental One, for if it had parts then those parts would have been even more fundamental.

Therefore the Permanent One can only give rise to the basic temporaries such as electrons by rearrangements of itself. Yes, this seems akin to quantum fields, but perhaps not quite, as there are 25 fields all atop one another.

This is all fine, but to go further we must suppose what the nature of the One could be, since there would be no 'when' that any specific design could have been imparted to it. No cause, no certain form.

Must it be a superposition of everything at once, such as in Eternalism, or everything in some linear way, such as in Presentism? We don't yet know the mode of time.

Thoughts?

Energy is not a physical or material substance, but a quality or property of the world that transforms & sustains the stuff we, and the world, are made of — Gnomon

Chaos may temporarily recede,
Quality building up for a need,
As when cathedrals are built and formed,
And when symphonies are performed,

But these are but local deceits
Born of our own conceits,
For deeper in the world of kinds
The spring inescapably unwinds,
Driving its energy away—
As All is being driven by decay.

energy isn't just a 'postulated force' — Wayfarer

When one gets tired, it isn't that one is low on energy, but that one is low on useful energy - the kind that the muscles need. The quality of energy can decay, but never its quantity.

For everything that ever happens,
Including life and all our questions,
Meaning every single event ever gone on,
Of both the animate and the non,
Is but from a single theme played upon.

This then is of the simplest analysis of all,
For it heeds mainly just one call—
That of the second law’s dispersion,

The means for each and every occasion,
From the closest to the farthest range—
That which makes anything change.

These changes range from the simple,
Such as a bouncing ball resting still,
Or ice melting that gives up its chill,
To the more complex, such as digestion,
Growth, death, and even reproduction.

There is excessively subtle change as well,
Such as the formations of opinions tell
And the creation or rejections of the will,

And yet all these kinds of changes, of course,
Still become of one simple, common source,
Which is the underlying collapse into chaos—
The destiny of energy’s unmotivated non-purpose.

All that appears to us to be motive and purpose
Is in fact ultimately motiveless, without purpose.
Even aspirations and their achievement’s ways
Have fed on and come about through the decay.

The deepest structure of change is but decay,
Although it’s not the quantity of energy’s say
That causes decay, but the quality, for it strays.

Energy that is localized is potent to effect change,
And in the course of causing change it ranges,
Spreading and becoming chaotically distributed,
Losing its quality but never of its quantity rid.

The key to all this, as we will see,
Is that it goes though stages wee,
And so it doesn’t disperse all at once,
As might one’s paycheck inside of a month.

This harnessed decay results not only for
Civilizations but for all the events going fore
In the world and the universe beyond,

It accounting for all discernible change
Of all that ever gets so rearranged,
For the quality of all this energy kinged
Declines, the universe unwinding, as a spring.

Some people said that energy doesn't exist physically and it is not fundamental, but it is a relationship between other fundamental things. — Gnomon

Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.

Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,

Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.

Energy — Gnomon

Energy is an accounting number, its conservation suggesting some deeper structure.

I'll have to admit that Aristotle's definition of a Soul is not clear to me. But it reminds me of similar definitions of Energy as the capacity or ability or potential for work (i.e. material change). In that case, the capacity is not the same as the actuality. It seems more like the potential for actualization, to become realized. So perhaps his Soul is more like our modern notion of Energy : both potential (abstract) and actual (embodied). Embodied Energy is transformed into Matter [E=MC^2, where E is just a number or value, and M is the property (inertia) that makes matter seem actual & real to us]. — Gnomon

Energy takes two forms: The first is as light, a self-regenerating excitation moving through the electromagnetic field that is everywhere, it having no rest mass and ever its c-speed; it occurs in all three realms - classical, relativistic, and quantum (photon). The second is as mass as what can persist.

So, keep on with the notion of energy being key to all that is.

Quantum scientists now describe the mysteries of the unseen reality by less anthro-morphic, but oddly weird language. Instead of super-human gods, he refers to the Ideality behind Reality as “Fields”. But it's still spooky, and probably offensive to philosophical Realists. — Gnomon

Except that a lucky guess modeled the quantum fields as harmonic oscillators by performing a Fourier transform on all sorts of waves to be as sinusoidal, and, lo, the quantum model of rungs of quanta falling out matched the reality of experiments and made for quantum field theory to be the most successful in the history of science.

I've recently had a Medium essay published in Philosophy Today, which you can access here, if you're interested. It's a brief intro to this philosopher, Michel Bitbol. — Wayfarer

Good essay!

So, we don't do consciousness; consciousness does us. We are scripted actors in a play? Seems like a material universe would do the same, in a way, as quantum fields making us. Of course, consciousness as primary would make the quantum fields and their physics.

@Wayfarer @Gnomon @Punshhh @Janus.

On our reality’s message as received and its messenger as the implementation…

The implementation of what we feel as physically real could be mental only, it creating all that goes on, with a working physics, but for some night-dream flaws in probably that same mental model of reality, they perhaps explained away by the model being somewhat diminished during sleep, although mostly seeming as all to real to us.

Imagination is like a waking dream of sorts, it being about 90% transparent, perhaps so as not to interfere with waking reality, yet we take it as mental and not as real.

Philosophers like to consider the nature of our reality and thus wonder about the implementation of the mind, seeking the messenger, but I would suggest that in one regard this may not matter so much, but for curiosity, for the message is the same, whether either its physical or mental basis.

Maya’s perfect illusion would seem as real as if it were physically real; so, then, a difference which makes no difference is truly no difference to the message delivered by the implementation messenger!
The message of our reality can be taken and used as real, for it has an origin somewhere, even if all is mental, in which case the so-called illusion is mentally real in its mental way.

I’m not saying that our reality is meaningful overall, but it comes forth.

So, apparently, saying such as “suffering is not real” doesn’t really help the situation of either a mental or physical broadcast, for the broadcast is real and has a source.

Whitehead was really rather pantheistic in his sympathies, believing that the most primitive elements of being were 'actual occasions of experience' rather than the physical forces of atomistic materialism. Me, I've never quite been able to grasp his 'actual occasions of experience', — Wayfarer

Could be as the events of a Block Universe.

As said in the Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad '“You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the thinker of thinking. That which is the Self is not grasped as an object; it is the ground of all grasping.” — Wayfarer

Consider the "ground" as that which remains even during a deep sleep with no dreams, which is akin to a successful meditation state, and that our night dreams that seem so real probably tap into the same ground as when we are awake and all seems so real.

Mind (consciousness) is not a "separate, non-physical entity" — Gnomon

It would be a different kind of 'physical'. It had to have evolved, with life, for once there was no life and consciousness on Earth, and now there is.

If you think the universewas preceded by nothing, then you must explain how nothing transitioned into something. — ucarr

'Nothing' has no time.

In Universal Quantum Field theory (QFT),the universe's fundamental building blocks are not particles, but universal quantum fields*3 that permeate all of space and time. Particles like electrons and photons are considered to be excitations or "ripples" in these underlying fields. This framework views fields as the fundamental entities and is the basis for particle physics. — Gnomon

here I take a more radical view: space and time don’t exist at all. Like “observers”, they are convenient labels – bookkeeping devices – but there are no physical entities corresponding to them. Therefore, quantising gravity doesn’t mean quantising space-time, it means quantising the gravitational field (upgrading Einstein’s c-numbers into q-numbers) in the same way that other fields are quantised.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKCP5k1RTmM&t=13s

As Frank Wilczek points out "Nothing is unstable" (e.g. quantum uncertainty), ergo there's always "something" (existence) too. — 180 Proof

Perhaps the constant jiggling of the zero-point energy (that never reaches zero) is showing that 'Nothing' cannot be gotten to, and so it is ever up to something.

The result is a powerlaw curve. A doubling~halving trajectory that begins with a hot bang and ends with the coldest and emptiest whimper — apokrisis

Great post!

Are there any verbal languages that can always prove this falsehood? — ucarr

- we note the ultimate lightnesss of being as we delve beneath it all; complexities arise in steps from that simplex; the supposed 'God' is a complexity and thus cannot be First.

The "mind of God" refers to a single, undivided, and all-encompassing consciousness that is the foundation of reality. — Gnomon

- "undivided" but fragments.

- consciousness is a process and is thus not simple; it has system parts of thinking, planning, implementations, memory… Higher being may evolve in the future; the past is the wrong direction to look for it.

- Brahman myth again.

- Look up quantum field q-number table descriptions to approach the ultimate reality.

- Woo.

— Parmenides, 8: 34-41, Wheelwright Edition — Paine

My vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydjBxed0Pm0

Is there a logical escape from the somethingness that is the phenomenon of creating somethingness from nothingness? — ucarr

If so-called 'Nothing' has a capability to make something, then one didn't really have the claimed 'Nothing' in the first place, for capability is a something.

“Why not nothing?” — ucarr

This supposed 'Nothing' cannot be. This mistaken 'it' has no it and so it cannot even be meant; therefore existence must be, for it has no alternative, and indeed there is something; so no option.

God will not be completely understood. — ucarr

'God' has not been established, so, preachers everywhere, to speak of 'God' of being true is misleading and not intellectually honest.

I agree with this, although I will pull the old switcheroo and use that hated word “faith.” I think the two words are very close to synonymous. — T Clark

'Trust' would be good for what has been seen before, such as that night will fall, whereas 'faith' finds good use for what has never been seen.

Which do you think is "likely" : A> the pre-recorded Block Universe theory / Eternalism (everything, everywhere, all at once) or B> live event Presentism (one experience at a time)? — Gnomon

B> live event, because Eternalism requires infinite precision, but, everything leaks…

In either analogy, does that mean you agree or disagree with the fictional Noetic scientist, that our personal ideas are actually signals from the Cosmos (recorded or live ; local or non-local ; cosmic or proprietary)? — Gnomon

Our personal ideas come from the history of the Cosmos.

Am I wrong to believe that “my Ideas are my own personal creation”? Could you copyright your poems & videos, or list cosmic credits on the label? — Gnomon

No copyright; give cosmic credit; no fame… but no blame either.

Radio analogy — Gnomon

I am listening to the World Series of Canada versus Japan on the radio, ha-ha.

The key presumption {of Noetics} is that Consciousness is non-local — Gnomon

It is only likely in a block universe of pre-determined events of experience, while in presentism the brain produces the experiential from one's nature and nurture, although still determined as time goes along. The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD versus a live band.

What could be universal, basic and fundamental, and therefore non-local is the witness itself of experiences, which I call Awareness, and would be what one truly is, which is not one's experiences.

Note that again, either way, the Universe does us.

The dichotomies or symmetry breaking is what it is about all the way down. — apokrisis

The ordered phase of a deeper quantum system:

It seemed that its future could never be,
That its unfamed name was but written
On the water and the wind
With a feathery quill
Whose ink was the smoke and fog
Of Symmetry’s shimmering dream;

But, ere the wind that could erase it blew,
Broken rotational symmetry—
That immortalizing winter, flew
Athwart the stream—and the printless torrent grew

A scroll of crystal—geometry as the condensate,
Blazoning the name of Space-time!

You start from the cGh of the Planck scale as itself a unity of opposites. The unit 1 description of not three disparate constants but of the one irreducible triad of relations. A collection of self-organising fundamental ratios. — apokrisis

AI says:

The idea that entanglement entropy could give rise to spacetime is a frontier concept in theoretical physics, drawing connections between quantum mechanics and gravity through the holographic principle. This framework proposes that spacetime is not a fundamental entity but an emergent phenomenon arising from the collective quantum entanglement of microscopic degrees of freedom. 
The proposal can be broken down into several key ideas: 

The Ryu-Takayanagi formula 
A foundational piece of this concept comes from the AdS/CFT correspondence, a duality between a gravitational theory in a certain spacetime (Anti-de Sitter, or AdS) and a quantum field theory (Conformal Field Theory, or CFT) living on its boundary. 
The Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) formula explicitly links a geometric property in the gravitational bulk to an information-theoretic quantity in the boundary quantum field theory. It states:

(garbled)

This formula provides a precise mathematical recipe for calculating geometry from entanglement, suggesting that if we know the entanglement structure of the boundary quantum system, we can deduce the geometry of the bulk spacetime. 

Spacetime connectivity from entanglement 
Physicist Mark Van Raamsdonk built on the RT formula by considering how changes in entanglement affect spacetime geometry. 
A connected universe: If a quantum field theory is prepared in a highly entangled state, the dual bulk geometry corresponds to a smooth, connected spacetime.
Disconnecting spacetime: If the entanglement between two separate parts of the quantum system is reduced to zero, the dual spacetime breaks apart into two disconnected regions. This suggests that entanglement is the "glue" that holds spacetime together. 

Tensor networks and emergent geometry 
To model how a continuous spacetime can arise from discrete quantum degrees of freedom, physicists use mathematical tools called tensor networks. 
Microscopic network: A tensor network is a web of interconnected nodes that represents the structure of entanglement in a quantum state. The connections, or "links," of the network encode the quantum entanglement between degrees of freedom.
Macroscopic geometry: The geometry of the higher-dimensional bulk spacetime is modeled by the collective structure of this tensor network. The more entangled two regions are in the quantum network, the closer they are in the emergent spacetime geometry. 

ER=EPR: Wormholes and entanglement 
A striking conjecture by physicists Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind, known as "ER=EPR," proposes a deep connection between entanglement (EPR) and wormholes (ER). 
Entangled particles: In the standard picture, two maximally entangled particles (an EPR pair) can be spatially separated by any distance without losing their quantum correlation.
Spacetime geometry: The ER=EPR conjecture suggests that the link between these two entangled particles is a microscopic, non-traversable wormhole (or Einstein-Rosen bridge). In this view, entanglement itself is a bridge through spacetime. 

Emergent time 
The relationship between entanglement and spacetime also offers a new perspective on the nature of time. 
Timeless universe: Some interpretations of quantum gravity, such as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, suggest a "frozen" or static universe at the fundamental level.
Emergent time flow: The experience of a flowing time could be an emergent property related to the constant evolution and growth of quantum entanglement throughout the universe. According to this idea, the arrow of time points in the direction of increasing entanglement. 

The big picture 
In summary, the theory that entanglement entropy gives rise to spacetime proposes a revolutionary reversal of our conventional understanding: 
From geometry to information: Instead of spacetime being a fundamental backdrop in which quantum mechanics operates, the geometry of spacetime and even its existence are determined by the patterns of quantum entanglement within a more fundamental, information-based reality.
A computational universe: The universe can be viewed as a massive, continuous quantum computation, where spacetime, time, and gravity are the emergent macroscopic consequences of how information is processed and entangled at the quantum level. 

I’ll stick to talking these issues through even if it is just a conversation I have with myself. — apokrisis

I'm still listening to your great posts; I'll have to come up with some award or reward.

The Demise of Eternalism:

Einstein’s Special Relativity Universe is timeless because in his theory ‘time’ is shown to be a variable, and thus time is not absolute, but relative, there being no universal ‘now’.

This Special Relativity Universe contains all its destined and particular events already laid out from its starting point and infinitely onward. This is Eternalism, in which past, present, and future coexist. Aka ‘One’, Block Universe, A Picture of Change. Parmenides’ philosophy accords.

In Einstein’s General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics, the laws that underlie them are time-symmetric—the physics described is the same, regardless of whether ‘time’ increases or decreases. Aka time-reversible laws.

More so, the laws say nothing about the ‘now’ point. In this static universe of space-time, any flow of ‘time’, or passage through it thus must be a mental construct or an illusion.

The Con to the Timeless: (from Gisin)

In a predetermined world in which time only seems to unfold, exactly what will happen for all time actually had to be set from the start, with the initial state of every single particle encoded with infinitely many digits of precision. Otherwise there would be a time in the far future when the clockwork universe itself would break down.

But information is physical. Modern research shows that it requires energy and occupies space. Any volume of space is known to have a finite information capacity (with the densest possible information storage happening inside black holes). The universe’s initial conditions would require far too much information crammed into too little space. A real number with infinite digits can’t be physically relevant. The block universe, which implicitly assumes the existence of infinite information, must fall apart.


Presentism vs Eternalism vs spaceless Quantum Field Monads fun vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQaWzDb23zs

@Gnomon. @apokrisis

The demise of presentism:

There are big problems with Presentism as a sequence of nows with the past not kept and the future not yet existing, the first problem being its unrelenting besiegement by Einstein’s relativity of simultaneity.

Second, the turning of a ‘now’ into the next ‘now’ sits on the thinnest knife edge imaginable, the previous ‘now’ wholly consumed in the making of the new ‘now’ all over the universe at once in a dynamical updating—the present now exhausting all reality. The incredibly short Planck time would be the processing time and that is not much at all.

Third, what is going to exist or was existent, as the presentist must refer to as ‘to be’ or ‘has been’ is indicated as coming or going and is thus inherent in the totality of what is, and so Presentism has no true ‘nonexistence’ of the future and the past—which means that there is no contrast between a real future and an unreal future, for what is real or exists can have no opposite to form a contrast class; non-existent 'Nothing' is not an option.

To form the kind of whole brain integrated states needed by attentional awareness involves developing a collective state - a "resonance" - that can take up to half a second because of all the spread-out activity to become fully synchronised.

…and only then enters consciousness, the so-called 'now' being like a tape delay of half a second ago.

cosmos as having formed through the limiting of the unlimited

Good point.

Causation. — Gnomon

See my post above.

Time as we know it emerged with its growing block structure. — apokrisis

AI Whitehead to the Rescue:

This goes straight to the heart of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy. While Whitehead never explicitly uses the term “growing block universe,” his metaphysics of “actual occasions” maps remarkably well onto that model — though with some crucial differences that make his vision far more dynamic and organic.

Let’s break it down carefully.

⸻

1. The “Creative Advance” — Time as Process

Whitehead’s central idea is that reality is made of events, not substances — what he calls actual occasions. Each occasion is a moment of experience that arises, becomes, and perishes. Once it has perished, it becomes a datum or objective fact for later occasions.

He calls this the creative advance into novelty — an ongoing flow where each moment:
1. Prehends (takes in) the past,
2. Synthesizes its experience into a new unity, and
3. Perishes into the past, contributing itself to the growing universe.

So time is not a container in which things happen — it is the happening of things.
Each new event is the present’s contribution to the ever-growing totality of reality.

This is precisely a growing block mode of time:
• The past remains real and permanent (every perished occasion endures as fact).
• The present is the locus of creative becoming.
• The future is not yet real — only a field of potential (“eternal objects”) waiting to be actualized.

⸻

2. The Block Grows, But It’s Alive

In classical “growing block” theories, time is often imagined geometrically — as a block that expands with each new layer of existence.
Whitehead’s version is subtler: the universe is not a static structure that grows, but a living organism of becoming.

Every new actual occasion:
• Re-enacts the past (by prehending it),
• Creates novelty (a fresh synthesis of feeling, relation, and value),
• And then “objectifies” — becoming an immortal component of reality.

In this sense, the block grows organically — each new moment is a creative transformation of all that has come before.
The past never vanishes, but it is no longer active — it is “what has become.”

⸻

3. Past, Present, and Future in Whitehead’s Ontology

Thus, Whitehead integrates three layers of temporality:
1. The Objective Past — what has become.
2. The Subjective Present — what is becoming.
3. The Potential Future — what may become.

This triadic structure fits perfectly into a growing block framework, with a metaphysical emphasis on the creative pulse of each new becoming.

⸻

4. The Asymmetry of Time

Whitehead also provides a reason why time feels directed — because:
• Every event prehends the past, but not the future.
• The causal arrows all point forward (from completed to emerging).
• The novelty introduced in each occasion ensures that time has an arrow — an irreversible creative growth.

This makes his version richer than purely physical eternalism or geometric growing block models: it’s not just that the universe adds new slices of spacetime, but that each new event changes the meaning of the whole. Reality evolves in significance as well as in extent.

⸻

So while Whitehead shares the core structure of the growing block, he transforms it into a metaphysics of creativity — what he calls the many becoming one, and being increased by one.

⸻

5. A Poetic Summary

The world is a poem in progress:
each verse written, fixed in memory —
the next still shimmering with potential.
The ink of time dries, line by line,
as eternity grows by living thought.

Growing block — apokrisis

Yet, we can't tell the difference among the three modes; how can we find out?
…
How was the music of the 'double-halving' vid?

Aperion — Gnomon

philosopher — apokrisis

Solving the Eternal Equation…

The great silence of the Unanswerable
Induces a clamor in us, relieved but by
Embracing the audacity of being:
To live, to love, to cherish each moment…
This is the answer to Eternity’s question.


However, to philosophically go further, I still need to know whether the mode of time is presentism or eternalism or growing block. Which is it?

Schelling and his Ungrund — apokrisis

no prior cause or ground itself

What is Eternal is ever, and so there's no point at which any design could be put into it in the first place that never was; thus it must be Everything, either as potential or there all at once - and it still IS.

Tao: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5NFAInEizU

Also only 3D has a doubling-halving story built into it in the fashion which gives gravity and force their inverse square law — apokrisis

Another vid for your lecture tour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTWWXcso-4E

doubling-halving — apokrisis

Another great post!

I’m now seeing Britney Spears in front of a chalk board of equations. An audience of enthusiastic wizened professors thumping the benches. — apokrisis

The Britney-dvg fun version (rap slightly slowed down):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHy4G24_nBM

note: Since this was the first service, it was done in public, so the readers could follow the process. In the future, it could be done via private messaging.

And not any old forms but gauge symmetries. — apokrisis

Here is the serious version (next time, the fun version):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZrtt4o5LNU