There is of course the third option of whatever lies inbetween. So it is quite wrong to construct a philosophy around a forced binary view when the reality is that most of existence is meant to be lived as a balance between two bounding extremes.

Your approach is flawed at its root. — apokrisis

If it's flawed, then what is this third option (other than unconsciousness, whether that be by sleep, or by unintentional/intentional death?)

Pessimism is thus just a symptom - the flipside of optimism. And both are essentially equally meaningless in a naturalistic context. Or at least, they should rightfully be passing psychological states if the long-term state of adaptedness ought to be one zeroed on smooth stoic equanimity.

If pessimism or optimism becomes a fixed state of mind, that tells of a mind that is no longer really thinking (and finding the path that points back to an even state of balance). — apokrisis

Again, there's a difference between psychological and philosophical pessimism.

Stoic equanimity works well in the classroom and the textbook. Out in the real world, not so much. The fact that we have to limit (balance) ourselves means there is a problem that must be resolved. The fact that we even have to have a debate over this means that there is something wrong - and if it's the psychology of the pessimists, then we merely have to realize that the pessimist is merely a manifestation of the world. We would come to realize that the universe is capable to inflicting harmful delusions upon its manifestations - if the pessimist, in all his horrifying existential theories, is actually wrong, then why is the pessimist even able to have these horrifying existential theories to begin with? Essentially, pessimism is an argument for pessimism.

Equanimity is artificial, contrived. It's forced into existence and held into existence by the sheer will of the psyche - I will be virtuous, I will not descend into panic, I will kick all my miseries under the rug and pretend everything is fine and ignore everyone else's tragedy, etc.

There is some truth in this, but look at how you keep needing to mention the "we" who fail to be in control. You take it for granted there is the "self" who is at the helpless centre of things, when psychology tells us such individuated being is a social construct. Animals just don't have the same ideas about life and so don't bewail the limits and efforts of being "a self" in the way you claim is so natural. — apokrisis

How do you know what ideas animals have? From a harm-based perspective, we ought to assume that behaviorally-similar organisms possess similar psychological facilities.

Furthermore, the "self" being a social construct doesn't change the fact that it's keenly present in our everyday experiences.

To everyone here: let's face the facts: there's two aspects of human existence: suffering and fun. If you're having a lot of fun, you usually don't care too much about suffering. And if you're suffering, you usually don't care too much for fun.

The point about pessimism is that suffering comes naturally. We don't control our bodies, we don't control our environment, we don't control our desires as much as we wish we did. The prevention of pain by the satisfaction of concerns is the primary purpose of human existence. Whereas fun requires effort and does not come naturally. Suffering is a structural aspect of life, fun is an accidental aspect of life.

"The richest experience that a tragedy can give is a pseudo-solution of the metaphysical problem of meaning through poetic sublimation"

- Peter Zapffe, On the Tragic

Modern life is one long struggle against boredom. — Thorongil

Just modern life, or the lives of those who don't have anything better to do?

Boredom pales in comparison to physical pain. Boredom is what made art, philosophy, sciences etc all possible. We've always struggled against boredom, it's just that today we're less and less able to find that psychological "flow" when we're forced into cubicles.

So modern life can be characterized as a bland persistence of laziness and servitude to our sensual desires, without the required energy to sublimate ourselves into the aesthetic. It's easy to stave off the boredom but it's ultimately ineffective because it's not aesthetic in nature. There's no effort required to be entertained.

Ah, is that it.

I think for the most part the internet as it is currently operating as is just another manifestation of humanity's propensity for stupidity. Or, to be more precise, it's just one more way humanity has turned something that has the potential for a lot of good into a device for a lot of silliness.

I wouldn't go as far as to say the internet is evil or a bad influence on society per se, just that it's a technological marvel that isn't being used to its full potential. To those who say we spend too much time on the internet, I'd reply that had we not had the internet we would have just been doing something else as a time sink.

As a way of communicating ideas and information, the internet has been an unrivaled success.

I'm unsympathetic to the appeal to a return to real-world interaction because I think disillusionment of this kind is a one-way street and that once human interaction is seen as trivial you can't reverse seeing that. There is nothing 'real' about what goes on in the real world. — The Great Whatever

The grass is always greener on the other side.

And I'd rather not, and in fact, my plan for the future is to be independent and financially stable enough so that I can drop kick this stupid machine out the window. At the moment, however, I have to use my computer and the Internet. — Thorongil

My point was that you're currently using the internet to contribute to a philosophy forum, a forum that I suspect you do not have to use.

I would rather a world without all this technology, to be honest. A world perhaps not too dissimilar to the Dark Ages. — Thorongil

I mean... you don't have to use the internet...

Technology has been and is the best way of improving the quality of life for human beings.

Had you lived in the Dark Ages, you would either have been (likely unimportant) priest or a serf/peasant on the estate of your lord, tilling the land, or maybe a liege knight of a petty king. You apparently had more free time back then, but then again there wasn't much to do, education was little to none (so much was lost in the sacking of Rome and the burning of Alexandria), income was little to none, life expectancy was mid forties to fifties, medicine was herbal and inefficient, pain killer was practically non-existent (alcohol was the only real one known), sanitation was quite relaxed in comparison to today (especially in cities and castles), and depending on where and when you lived you had to deal with the very real threat of invasion, or being conscripted (since you are a male), or dying in childbirth (if you're female), or plagues, not to mention the general superstition and irrational thinking that you of all people would have abhorred. Even the Catholic Church was filled with superstitious priests (it was a religion after all), corrupt higher-ups, and only a select few actually knew how to read and write and even less did philosophy. You're chances of being an Aquinas, Anselm, Augustine, or the Medieval Schopenhauer would be negligible.

All in all the Dark Ages would not have been like an extended camping trip in the wilderness. So many people fail as ascetics, or just hermits, because they aren't able to let go of all the comforts of modern life. There's a lot of trouble that comes along with these comforts, but I think it would quite decadent to say that these technological comforts are bad when you're currently benefiting from them.

This is one of the reasons why nominalism is so tedious and in all likelihood incorrect. Our language does not determine the identity of objects, the constitution of objects determine their identities, which our language describes in various ways. Languages can change all the time without the objects of predication changing.

I happen to be a composition-as-identity theorist, so whatever Pluto is, I see as dependent on every single part of whatever is seen as Pluto. A single change, changes the identity of Pluto from Pluto1.0 to Pluto1.1, for example. In fact I'm not even sure if I'm committed to objects in reality; I'm leaning towards conceptualist anti-realism or mereological nihilism.

So, I think much of the common understanding and symbolism which has accrued around the notions of karma and reincarnation may become a lure towards an unhealthy preoccupation with personal salvation, at least for modern Western aspirants. — John

It's definitely a Western thing, since afaik re-birth in Buddhism is more akin to the passing of a flame from one candle to the next. You obtain enlightenment not only for yourself but also for other people.

I believe it is important to recognize that Aquinas approached Aristotelian metaphysics from a firm Neo-Platonist foundation. Therefore his work was to interpret Aristotle in a way so as to establish consistency with Neo-Platonist principles. This involved selective referencing, and generally shaping the material to conform. I think that if an inverse situation had occurred, if one were to approach Neo-Platonic metaphysics from a stringent Aristotelian platform, such a consistency could not have been established. . — Metaphysician Undercover

So, like I was saying, Aquinas rather "bastardized" Aristotelianism. That's not to say that what he did was remarkable, but he certainly had an agenda to fulfill, it would seem.

They were free to think within the confines of Scripture. Like Whitehead said: Christianity is a religion looking for a metaphysics (...while Buddhism is a metaphysics looking for a religion).

I might be wrong but I think Schop1 meant that Augustine (and Aquinas) limited themselves somewhat by adhering to Christianity. Whereas people like Plotinus didn't have to do that and in fact criticized the religions of their day.

Like I said, the Church was playing its cards.

Thank you, I hadn't heard of Kenny, although apparently Feser responds to his critiques. I'll have to read the original documents some time though.

Any recommendations for alternative theologies, such as Augustine?

But the point about that school is, it is about the last remaining outpost of the perennial tradition that is still alive in Western culture. — Wayfarer

What do you consider to be the "perennial" tradition?

although I don't share his Catholic convictions. — Wayfarer

May I ask why you do not? This would make you, at minimum, opposed to his theology.

This is the problem with Peirce. He puts all possible self-orgainsation into the principle of our minds, as if we new everything about the world by knowing a few general principles. Rather than putting models and meaning in the world, giving each state of the world its specific meaning which we might or might not know, he insists what we know must be the extent of the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Peirce was basically an idealist - didn't he think matter was "condensed" mind?

It's why it rubs me the wrong way when people believe in an objective, unknowable noumenon "just to say they're realists". It's as if it's just slapped in their in order to avoid being called a full-fledged idealist.

Existence does that. — TheWillowOfDarkness

How does existence do this? By power ontology, teleology, tychism, etc?

I can't say I enjoy these debates when this tone arrives in them. I certainly didn't mean to be rude, so I'm sorry if I was, but please don't be rude in return for a perceived slight. — mcdoodle

(Y) I cannot and will not stand arguments. I enjoy discussion, not flame wars.

Interesting thoughts.

What I was thinking was that, contra folk conceptions of a perfectly orderly universe that obeys timeless laws, you have "breaks" in the system that occur during key transitions within the system. Kind of like how when a computer fumbles and the processing goes haywire.

The point I'm trying to make it kind of difficult to explain. But basically we're often told (reassuredly) that the universe "doesn't care" about us - aka it's neutral and not benevolent or malevolent.

But this contradicts the very experiences we have. The universe is capable of producing beings who suffer. It might not be anthropomorphized but it nevertheless can be characterized as bad. Harmful, malignant.

We can feel alienated from the rest of the world, as if we're the only ones who experience anything and everything else is just dead, lifeless matter. But isn't it quite peculiar that our of a vast ocean non-consciousness, there exist little islands of consciousness? Wouldn't it strange if we're the only beings that have consciousness?

The self-reflexivity of consciousness is a very strange aspect of it. That we're able to introspect and feel as though we don't belong is baffling. How is it physically possible that we feel as though we don't belong? Again we feel this way because the universe allows this to happen - a self-conscious and introspecting reflexive agent is a possibility of the universe. We are simultaneously at home in the universe and yet completely alienated from it.

So I have to criticize Zapffe a bit when he says that consciousness is "not-natural". On the contrary, everything in the universe is natural (nature doesn't exist exist in the first place, it's an empty word). It's natural that people can feel unnatural. Kind of disturbing, like an instance of cosmic self-hate.

There is precedent for maladaptive evolution in sexual selection. I think of the peacock's fan, an evolutionary pain in the butt, that happens, we are told, when mere survival is less of a problem than obtaining a mate. Extravagant antlers similarly.
So perhaps big brain is more about social competitiveness than dealing with the environment at large. But as a side effect, it allows the radical manipulation a 'conquest' of the environment.

Too much success, though, is also maladaptive. Consider the rampant success of Dutch Elm disease, spreads like wildfire, kills all the Elms, destroys its own niche. Unfortunately, our niche is the whole planet.

Here we are unfolding our peacock fans of mind, even though there are no ladies to impress, because we have them all the time and can't help it. It's a pain, but we keep doing it, as if the 'understanding' of a species of ape is the crown of creation. — unenlightened

Interesting. This seems to support the idea that, when natural selection is not at its most brutal (survival or nothing), sophistication can really take off exponentially, like an out-of-control automobile racing down a hill.

I'll admit I never heard of such a theory (that the brain acts as a repressive organ and not a storage and functional organ), but I don't really see how it could be true. If it were true, you'd see car accident victims (with brain damage) remembering a ton of new things. Drugs would actually give us insight and not just "whoa dude" catch-phrases.

In a certain sense, the brain does act as a filter. We're constantly bombarded by countless stimuli, and the brain has to narrow the focus down to the relevant stimuli. We aren't consciously aware of our toes, or our scalp, or the back of our throat. We aren't consciously aware of the corners of our eyesight, or the rhythmic beating of our heart in the ear canal.

But to say that there is an entire world that our brain "represses" without our control seems to be quite extravagant.

It's clear that many animals are like us, at least in behavior. And if it's any indication from our own studies of our own species, it's that mental activity is largely behind behavior.

Check our /r/likeus for cute gifs and whatnot of animals doing things that humans do. It's cute but also very thought-provoking. Some of the things these animals do are astonishingly human. Had it not been for their physical difference in appearance, they would have passed as humans or near-humans.

In any rate, when we're talking ethics, we can't assume we know what it's like to be a bat, or an antelope, or a cockroach. We have to assume they can experience things, particularly suffering or a wish to survive, the things that make something of ethical value.

For most people who like 'dong a lot,' I can't help but think that they ought to do even more and put a bullet through their head. Je je — The Great Whatever

What the hell bro. I don't know what to say to this.

If you care about suffering, you'll do something about it.

From what I can tell, it's that idealism accounts for accidents only because what happens outside of our perceptions is dependent upon what happens within our perception. The unperceived is still given, but it is not given to the subject. idk this shit's confusing.

How would the transcendental idealist or simulationist deal with the fact that accidents happen all the time? I could get struck by lightning and never see the bolt before it kills me.

Of course it's not a big deal if you accept a kind of primary vs secondary quality distinction. The bolt of lightning would have primary qualities regardless of whether or not I perceive the bolt.

But transcendental idealism seems to argue that what we do not perceive is in some kind of "proto" state, or a state of pure potentiality and no effable characteristics.

I feel like idealism might have some substance behind it, but it seems to fail to account for accidents, as well as the experience of discovering something new.

Other than idealism, property dualism (a la Spinoza) is one of the better positions imo. In certain formulations it might seem like panpsychism; for example we could theorize that the mental is merely a relationship between two material objects. The experience of red is the secondary quality that derives its existence from the relationship between the perceiving subject and the object reflecting radiation.

I don't really understand Aristotle's psychology, maybe that has something to it.

Peter Zapffe and Julio Cabrera. Also Philipp Mainlander.

So sure, my argument is that everything is "made of apeiron", which sounds like talking about a primal stuff.

But the difference is that your notion of this stuff is that it is already concrete. It is already formed. It already obeys a conservation principle and a locality principle. — apokrisis

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about primal material. It's not concrete, you can't hold it. Concreteness is complex, prime material is simple. Phenomenologicaly it is vague, metaphysically it is as simple as it can possibly get.

As Plotinus said, the "One" can only be arrived at by figuring out what it isn't. And so the same thing applies to the Aristotelian Substance, for it cannot be predicated upon but merely identified as a necessary component of Being.

I'm not interested in your narrow definition of what counts as metaphysics. I merely point out that I defend the very first important metaphysics model in philosophy - Anaximander's hierarchical symmetry breaking tale of the apeiron. — apokrisis

Apparently you're willing to sacrifice all other metaphysical theorizing though for a vision that is quasi-empirical and belongs more in the field of science than speculative philosophy.

because it's trying to pose it as an empi[ri]cal state. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Exactly. Phenomenologically, substance is vague. But it isn't actually "vague".

Although I'm sympathetic to the idea that vagueness is a real feature of reality. Just not the hypostasis. The hypostasis is always there. Vagueness is a contingent feature of the empirical, and thus observable, world.

Also Spinoza is bae.

Ye gods. Outright mysticism. — apokrisis

You're calling Plato a mystic. OK.

Otherwise your hypostatic reductionist framework is in deep shit. Isn't that a rather personalised invocation of final cause? — apokrisis

I adopted the hypostasis view because it makes sense and then adopted the necessary components like substance later.

I hear a bark, I believe there to be a dog. I recognize metaphysical reductionism, therefore I believe there to be a prime substance. It would be silly to not recognize the existence of a dog. So why is it silly to recognize the existence of prime substance? It's existence is narrowed down by what it is not, and the stuff we see around us are like "echoes" to to speak of its existence, just as the bark is an "echo" (notification) of the existence of the dog.

In the Neo-Platonic view: if what is meant to explain something is complex, it requires further explanation. That's the reductionism I'm speaking of here. It can't be an infinite chain of complexity. There has to be something simple in which everything emerges from.

So again I'm not against systems or processes. I recognize that a spider web cannot exist without its structural integrity from all its lines and nodes. But I also recognize that these lines and nodes are complex in themselves and cannot exist without silk.

And so the point of metaphysics is to inquire about what the most simple basis of reality is. Its joints.

Well the obvious retort is that vagueness exists vaguely. And we can speak about that intelligibly as being the antithesis of the crisply formed world from where we ask such questions. — apokrisis

At what point does something go from vague to crisp? Is it vague, vague, vague BOOM crispness? Why does this happen? And how does this happen outside of time?

So sure, one has to use a little poetic licence to introduce the idea. But it is of no real interest unless it can be mathematically modelled. Just like quantum foam, virtual particles, zero point energy, spontaneous symmetry breaking and the many other useful physical concepts that depend on a notion of "pure fluctuation". — apokrisis

What is poetry and what is not?

Why is it of no real interest? Because you don't find it exciting or personally interesting? Because it's not useful?

If these concepts depend upon pure fluctuation, then this pure fluctuation needs to be explained further. Otherwise you're resting science on poetry.

You are raising quibbles that have long been left behind in science and math informed metaphysics. — apokrisis

What I don't understand is, if this great narrative of naturalized metaphysics was so successful, why it's not well known today. You would think that this kind of thinking would have been implemented early if it was indeed sophisticated and coherent.

So either it was ignored in a millennia-old intellectual conspiracy, or it didn't make sense. That, or it's a recent trend emerging from the chaos of 19th and 20th century theoretical physics and the subsequent loss of orientation. Or everyone is lazy and screwing everyone else over with their bullshit so they can keep their tenures (both naturalized and non-naturalized philosophers). Or, if it's because this movement exists within an (esoteric) circle, it's not the fault of everyone else that they don't get it. Coherent communication is key.

Are these quibbles actually answered or are they left behind, pushed into the corner and forgotten about? What seems to be the case is that these people you speak of have literally left behind these questions in favor of ones that are more useful or stimulating while continuing to use the term "metaphysics" when they're really doing philosophy of science or science itself. They're not concerned with the debate over universals, they're concerned with how similar behavior emerged regardless of universalism or nominalism. These questions aren't relevant to what they wish to study. Which is fine. But it's confusing when you say that this is metaphysics when the overwhelming literature surrounding metaphysics does not match with what they do.

And you find this a self-evident and undeniable truth because? .... [please fill in blank]. — apokrisis

Because it's what makes sense to me. I've stated my reasons and tried to make it as clear as I could.

I mean has science found some such ultimate basis? Surely what science is finding that wind the clock back to beginnings and it all goes quantum vague (indeterminate). — apokrisis

I view metaphysics as the study of being qua being. Essentially it speculates about what cannot be observed. Indeed, it speculates upon the necessary conditions for observation to even occur. Being, not beings.

A shadow cannot exist without a body blocking out the light. The properties of the world are like shadows and depend upon a body that has no properties.

And is it even an intelligible clam? Just because most of what we know from our own scale of being seems to have a substantial underpinning, how can it be turtles all the way down? How can there be a first definite stuff with no cause? Doesn't that do the ultimate violence to the very notion of causality you hope to employ. — apokrisis

That's the point of Substance. It can't be turtles all the way down, under this scheme. There needs to be a first definite "stuff" out of logical necessity, similar to the logical necessity of God in Aristotle and Aquinas' theology. It's why asking "what caused God?!" misses the entire point of the argument - under the metaphysical scheme from which they are operating, God is a necessary component. So the issue here is to explain how the metaphysical scheme is problematic, not necessarily attempting to dissolve an issue within the framework.

Peirce's semiotic approach - which grants that beginnings can be vague, an unstructured sea of fluctuation - is the one that fits a generally informational and developmental metaphysics (of the kind to be found in physics and cosmology today). — apokrisis

This is what I'm talking about. What the hell does an "unstructured sea of fluctuation" mean apart from poetry? How can something fluctuate without structure? What does it even mean to be vague, and why did this vagueness suddenly break?

If you want to identify this vagueness as Substance, then you're on my side. Vagueness is the hypostasis of reality, from which all beings are birthed from like an "apeiron" as you like to say. But this immediately runs into problems, I'd say, because there's no explanation as to how this vagueness exists, as if its vagueness isn't dependent upon anything else and is just floating around somewhere in non-spacetime. And if you accuse me of misusing the term "floating" (since there's no space or time in which to float in), then this point equally applies to you're use of an "unstructured sea of fluctuation".

We don't need to do cosmology or physics to understand that there needs to be a fundamental Being.

Vagueness would then be the phenomenologically-closest thing to describe Substance as, since Substance can't even be ascribed any properties like vagueness. Our knowledge of Substance would only be out of logical necessity and not out of direct empirical observation, as this would be impossible. It would be out of a narrowing of possibilities, just as Aristotle and Aquinas narrowed the possibilities and came to the conclusion that a God exists.

So a more radical alternative is already demanded as reductionism can't ground itself. — apokrisis

On the contrary, metaphysical reductionism is a necessity. Scientific reductionism, probably not. But we shouldn't confuse the two as the same thing.

If what I said is an assertion, then everything you said is an assertion as well. I'm coming from a certain view point, and you are coming from a different one. At this point we're both talking past each other.

Give me a understandable explanation of why my reductionism is wrong, preferably without using unnecessary jargon, and I'll change my views. I'm not opposed to systems and processes, but I don't think they are the underlying reality. They're second-order phenomena. Why should I abandon this hypostasis view and adopt your position, and what does your position hold that is different from mine?

The biggest reason why I have so much difficulty discussing things with you is that I have no idea what the hell "vagueness" is supposed to mean or be, nor "structure" in the metaphysical sense, or what the evolution of space and time means outside of an empirical phenomenon happening within space and time.

So there's processes in nature, like a fish tank filled with water and other stuff. But the fish tank isn't a process in the same way a ripple on the water is a process, or the hum of the filter is a process. For each time we postulate a process, we need to postulate a stage in which this process is occurring. Otherwise we're left with a vague and empty term that we cannot possibly imagine. Which in fact was the definition of Substance - that which is predicated upon but cannot be predicated itself. We can't imagine substance, we can only use analogies and appeals to logical necessity. And so if we can't conceptualize Process, then it becomes the exact same thing as Substance - both are the hypostasis of reality. There's no point in calling it Process, then, because it only brings confusion, since Process is something we can conceptualize (like a wave, or system, or what have you) and if the underlying hypostasis cannot be conceptualized, then there's nothing similar between a wave and the so-called primordial Process.

Of course we can say "everyTHING is in flux", and claim that no concrete particular is static. We can say that the entire universe is ever-changing and moving. And so we begin to fall into Heideggerian metaphysics.

Well I think processes are dependent upon a hypostasis. It doesn't make any sense to talk of structure, vagueness, proto-objecthood, process, or what have you without an underlying hypostasis.

It reminds me of Meillassoux's correlationism. I'm in the middle of reading his After Finitude, so I'll have to post some more later, but Meillassoux definitely has ideas about digitalization, ancestrality, and what have you.

What? Are you saying a liking for systems thinking is like homophobia? — apokrisis

No.

And sure we can say something about a sparrow. But again, don't mix synchronic epistemology and the diachronic ontological issue of universals. — apokrisis

The metaphysician isn't concerned with how universals evolved. He's concerned with whether or not universals exist. The evolving structure narrative can be explained without universals.

So you make pointing at particulars seem like something we can freely do at any chosen moment. But that is to confuse epistemology and ontolology if you are hoping to talk about the complicated and hierarchical structuring of nature that sees a sparrow emerge as a natural kind - a genus - let alone produces some particular bird before us. — apokrisis

Where does this sparrow emerge from? How is this "ancestral" generality not a particular? The fact that we can identify it and communicate about it shows that it's something. Maybe not like a sparrow, a chair, or a hydrogen-fusing hypergiant star, but something regardless.

(sexual ethics essentialism???). — apokrisis

Yes, you said that many today are disregarding universalism because of social issues - universalism is closely tied to essentialism, and essentialism has a rather blotchy history of labeling non-conformers as dysfunctional.

I mean sure, we can have "higher-level" pleasures or what have you, but at the end of the day it's pain or pleasure. That's what drives our decisions.

Why is nominalism incompatible with this narrative? There might be a historic narrative of universalism, but nominalism, albeit clunky, isn't totally out of the question. There doesn't seem to be anything against a scientific nominalism except for a tendency to associate tradition with truth.

(being that part of science's success that quixotically wants to reject its own philosophical grounds for social reasons.) — apokrisis

You talking about sexual ethics essentialism here?

You miss the point of science talking a hierarchical naturalistic view on the question. It does mean you can go out and measure universality in terms of generalised simplicity vs particularised complexity - gravity vs sparrows. — apokrisis

This strikes me as a scientific model. The star is condensed and then explodes in a supernova. The pupa transforms into a butterfly. The tree goes from complexity to degeneracy as it decomposes. And generalised simplicity becomes particularized complexity - none of these actually tell us whether or not universals exist because all of this can happen under a nominalist scheme, because neither are empirically weighted.

Generalised simplicity and particularized complexity seem to require properties themselves, namely, generality, simplicity, particularity, complexity, etc. These might not be real properties, only descriptions of a state of affairs. But the state of affairs is general, simple, particular, or complex or what have you depending on the history of events, and events transpire depending on what properties exist. Explaining how generalised simplicity becomes particularized complexity doesn't really tell us whether or not universals exist, because at any moment of time, a property is instantiated in virtue of the fact that something exists.