Metaphysics Meta Thread

[Guest]

Thread inspired by a post from F250 as metaphysical speculations tend to creep in & dominate certain conversations, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, due to the fundamental nature of the subject.

So tell us how reality is.  What is the nature of reality?  Why is it that way?  What things exist and what things do not?  Do only physical things exist?  How did our world come to be?  Why this world and not some other?  I'm always interested to hear people's thoughts on this subject.

Related comic

Related art:

[Homercles 10206]

Thread inspired by a post from F250 as metaphysical speculations tend to creep in & dominate certain conversations, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, due to the fundamental nature of the subject.
So tell us how reality is.  What is the nature of reality?  Why is it that way?  What things exist and what things do not?  Do only physical things exist?  How did our world come to be?  Why this world and not some other?  I'm always interested to hear people's thoughts on this subject.
Related comic
Related art:

The reality is that oU sucks

[DoobieWah 1469]

And apparently, that's all there is to it. 

I guess they can shut down CERN now. 

[Guest]

Best metaphysics gif:

[Cacti 191]

On ‎8‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 11:47 PM, Aphelion said:

So tell us how reality is.  What is the nature of reality?  Why is it that way?  What things exist and what things do not?  Do only physical things exist?  How did our world come to be?  Why this world and not some other?  I'm always interested to hear people's thoughts on this subject.

I don’t have any original thoughts on the nature of reality. What views I do have were formed by combining thoughts (as I understand them) of John Archibald Wheeler and George Berkeley. With that preface, here we go:

I don’t believe there is reality without conscious observation/perception. Quoting Wheeler, “Nothing is more astonishing about quantum mechanics than its allowing one to consider seriously the view that the universe would be nothing without observership as surely as a motor would be dead without electricity”. In addition—and to paraphrase Wheeler—observer’s consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence…the “world of existences” did not exist “prior” to human subjectivity. So Wheeler’s view (as I understand it) is that the universe, or reality, only comes into existence through human consciousness.

Berkeley (again, as I understand him) had a similar view concerning the dependence of reality on observation/perception, except that he believed that there was an observer that preceded man and human consciousness.

So, to repeat myself, I don’t believe there is reality without conscious observation/perception. Unfortunately I’m not able to discuss this or any other metaphysical position in depth. For that, you’ll have to somehow summon certain long-gone, Quackenbush’s posters.  

[miguelito 11333]

I just saw a bumper sticker that said, "Let's get metaphysical."

So there's that.

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, Cacti said:

I don’t have any original thoughts on the nature of reality. What views I do have were formed by combining thoughts (as I understand them) of John Archibald Wheeler and George Berkeley. With that preface, here we go:

I don’t believe there is reality without conscious observation/perception. Quoting Wheeler, “Nothing is more astonishing about quantum mechanics than its allowing one to consider seriously the view that the universe would be nothing without observership as surely as a motor would be dead without electricity”. In addition—and to paraphrase Wheeler—observer’s consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence…the “world of existences” did not exist “prior” to human subjectivity. So Wheeler’s view (as I understand it) is that the universe, or reality, only comes into existence through human consciousness.

Berkeley (again, as I understand him) had a similar view concerning the dependence of reality on observation/perception, except that he believed that there was an observer that preceded man and human consciousness.

So, to repeat myself, I don’t believe there is reality without conscious observation/perception. Unfortunately I’m not able to discuss this or any other metaphysical position in depth. For that, you’ll have to somehow summon certain long-gone, Quackenbush’s posters.  

It's almost impossible to have any original thoughts on the nature of reality since some of the deepest thinkers have obsessed & written about this subject for over 2500 years now.  So you are in good company there.  

Regarding the dependence of reality on consciousness, I am in complete agreement with you there.  Imagine a universe like ours, but with no conscious beings in it or able to observe it in any way.  In what way can it be said to exist?  To give another comparison, consider two universes with all their rules and states mapped out, nether of which has any conscious observers.  What would it mean for one to exist but not the other?  Another way to state this is that it takes consciousness to turn (or "move") a potential world into an actual world.

Probably the simplest way to illustrate this concept is with games.  We can imagine games being played out any number of ways, but we don't consider possible game outcomes as actual games.  For example, just because we can imagine a football game developing in some way with certain plays, we would never consider this an actual game that was played.  What makes particular game an actual played game is that some conscious entities directly experienced & played it.  

I think reality is the intersection of conscious entities playing some game.  In our case, our physical reality is us conscious beings playing the universe game (the universe game being the rules of physics).  Many people think that the rules of the universe are casually prior and therefore produce conscious entities, so the view of reality I stated cannot be correct.  This is the physicalist or materialist view.  I reject the materialist view.  

[Sbbruin 21904]

So when dinosaurs were roaming the earth but there was no being able to conceive of the existence of the world at that time, then it didn't exist?  No, it existed.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

So when dinosaurs were roaming the earth but there was no being able to conceive of the existence of the world at that time, then it didn't exist?  No, it existed.

I think that any time one claims that something exists, the existence claim necessarily entails (whether intended or not) a reference to some conscious entity.  So when we say that the earth in the age of the dinosaurs existed, I could ask (according to my view) "it existed referent to who?"  Now maybe the dinosaurs have some sufficient level of consciousness to have a subjective experience, so the answer might be "it existed to the dinosaurs."  But let's consider the universe in the first few hundred years after the big bang.  During this period it did not exist for anybody (at least not for any physical beings within the universe).  We only consider it to have existed then because it effects us now.  But if the universe went some other way and recollapsed onto itself in some massive entropy state and consequently no sufficiently ordered systems developed, then it would not exist for you or I or any "one" else.  Who then would experience it as an existent world, then?  

Edited August 22, 2018 by Guest

[FondrenRoad 4378]

22 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

So when dinosaurs were roaming the earth but there was no being able to conceive of the existence of the world at that time, then it didn't exist?  No, it existed.

Dinosaurs were conscious beings that observed the world around them.  One doesn't have to ponder existence to perceive it.

I guess the question is whether existence can occur without perception or observation.  If someone hands you a sealed box and then dies, and you set the box unopened on your table, does anything exist inside the box?  What if you burn it without opening it?  The outcome is ultimately the same whether there is something or nothing in the box.

14 minutes ago, Aphelion said:

I think that any time one claims that something exists, the existence claim necessarily entails (whether intended or not) a reference to some conscious entity.  So when we say that the earth in the age of the dinosaurs existed, I could ask (according to my view) "it existed referent to who?"  Now maybe the dinosaurs have some sufficient level of consciousness to have a subjective experience, so the answer might be "it existed to the dinosaurs."  But let's consider the universe in the first few hundred years after the big bang.  During this period it did not exist for anybody (at least not for any physical beings within the universe).  We only consider it to have existed then because it effects us now.  But if the universe went some other way and recollapsed onto itself in some massive entropy state and consequently no sufficiently ordered systems developed, then it would not exist for you or I or any "one" else.  Who then would experience it as an existent world, then?  

I don't really share the belief that existence requires perception.  Even our perception of the first few hundred years after the big bang is observational.  Perception of that time period didn't exist prior to our mathematical observation of it.  That shouldn't mean that our observation brought that time period into existence.  It already existed.  Right now, outside the edge of the observable universe something exists even though we can't perceive it.

Eventually we will become extinct, the universe will eventually wipe away all evidence that we ever existed, and at some much later time the universe will likely have its own existence wiped away.  And even though our eventual extinction is a 100% certainty, we do exist and we will have existed.  The same can be said of a collapsed universe that never generated any life.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

Dinosaurs were conscious beings that observed the world around them.  One doesn't have to ponder existence to perceive it.

I guess the question is whether existence can occur without perception or observation.  If someone hands you a sealed box and then dies, and you set the box unopened on your table, does anything exist inside the box?  What if you burn it without opening it?  The outcome is ultimately the same whether there is something or nothing in the box.

I don't really share the belief that existence requires perception.  Even our perception of the first few hundred years after the big bang is observational.  Perception of that time period didn't exist prior to our mathematical observation of it.  That shouldn't mean that our observation brought that time period into existence.  It already existed.  Right now, outside the edge of the observable universe something exists even though we can't perceive it.

Eventually we will become extinct, the universe will eventually wipe away all evidence that we ever existed, and at some much later time the universe will likely have its own existence wiped away.  And even though our eventual extinction is a 100% certainty, we do exist and we will have existed.  The same can be said of a collapsed universe that never generated any life.

What would you say distinguishes a mathematically possible universe that doesn't exist from an actual existent universe that is never perceived or observed by any conscious entities?  What is it that makes an actual universe actual? 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4979]

Yeah, I think you could say that the universe cannot be proven to exist without perception, but to follow the idea that it requires perception to exist means that nothing we cannot have the means perceive exists. What about things that we can prove we don't have the means to perceive, like stuff outside the observable universe? Can we say then, assuming we are correct about not having the means to perceive it that it does not exist?

[Guest]

You guys are essentially rehashing the “if a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Ancient argument. That’s not a negative thing.

[FondrenRoad 4378]

1 hour ago, Aphelion said:

What would you say distinguishes a mathematically possible universe that doesn't exist from an actual existent universe that is never perceived or observed by any conscious entities?  What is it that makes an actual universe actual? 

I would say the difference is presence.  Only one of the two could be observed if an observer was present.

The actual universe would be observable to a being that encounters it even if no being ever actually encounters it.  It exists.

The mathematically possible universe would never be observable because it would never be present so no being could ever observe it.  It doesn't exist.  A mathematically certain universe would exist, however.

Instead of universes, try a smaller example:

1) There is a single small rock floating in space 1 million light years from here.  An alien life form may or may not have observed it.  A human may never observe it.  Does it exist in the universe?  Yes, and there are countless instances of things being "discovered" by an observer 100s, 1000s, or millions of years after they began their existence.  Observation did not spring them into existence.

2) Hypothetically, there should be trillions of small rocks floating around in the universe.  Do they exist?  If we come across a single small rock is it a mathematically possible small rock or is it an actual existing rock?

Humanity exists now.  In 5 billion years the sun will swallow the Earth and all record of our existence will be swallowed with it.  The only evidence in the universe that shows we ever existed will be space probes we sent out which will be lost in the vacuum of space.  If a future alien species comes to our red giant solar system, sees no evidence of life, and never sees any of our space probes, did we ever exist?  Do the voyager probes exist even if they are never again observed by a living species?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

You guys are essentially rehashing the “if a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Ancient argument. That’s not a negative thing.

Yep.  Although I don't think the question is that old (relative to the ancient subject of metaphysics).  As best I can tell, it sprang up in the 1800's (in the west at least).  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest

 

2 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Yeah, I think you could say that the universe cannot be proven to exist without perception, but to follow the idea that it requires perception to exist means that nothing we cannot have the means perceive exists. What about things that we can prove we don't have the means to perceive, like stuff outside the observable universe? Can we say then, assuming we are correct about not having the means to perceive it that it does not exist?

By conscious interaction or experience, I mean that one must be able to interact with something either directly or indirectly.  If some object (or anything the object may have interacted with via some chain) is completely outside the bounds of our observation per the universal rules, then we cannot be sure of its existence per the empirical method and it cannot have any impact on us.  It has no more actual reality to us than any fictional object/story we may read about.

 

50 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

I would say the difference is presence.  Only one of the two could be observed if an observer was present.

The actual universe would be observable to a being that encounters it even if no being ever actually encounters it.  It exists.

The mathematically possible universe would never be observable because it would never be present so no being could ever observe it.  It doesn't exist.  A mathematically certain universe would exist, however.

Instead of universes, try a smaller example:

1) There is a single small rock floating in space 1 million light years from here.  An alien life form may or may not have observed it.  A human may never observe it.  Does it exist in the universe?  Yes, and there are countless instances of things being "discovered" by an observer 100s, 1000s, or millions of years after they began their existence.  Observation did not spring them into existence.

2) Hypothetically, there should be trillions of small rocks floating around in the universe.  Do they exist?  If we come across a single small rock is it a mathematically possible small rock or is it an actual existing rock?

Humanity exists now.  In 5 billion years the sun will swallow the Earth and all record of our existence will be swallowed with it.  The only evidence in the universe that shows we ever existed will be space probes we sent out which will be lost in the vacuum of space.  If a future alien species comes to our red giant solar system, sees no evidence of life, and never sees any of our space probes, did we ever exist?  Do the voyager probes exist even if they are never again observed by a living species?

There isn't any difference between a possible universe and a universe that has no conscious being interaction.  If a possible universe has a conscious being that interacts with it, then this is what gives the universe "presence."  If a universe is possible, then it is possible to be interacted with.

In regards to the rock in space, I would say the observation suddenly sprang the rock into the conscious experience of the observer.  Before then it was being tracked or calculated per the universal rules and this universe is one with conscious observers.  If the rock never interacts with any conscious beings (either directly or indirectly), then it does not exist to any conscious being.  Imagine if you are playing an elaborate virtual reality video game with multiple players.  There may be all sorts of background object calcs going on, but if they never interact with any of the players (either directly or indirectly), then in what way are they real?  The other question that could be asked is - would the VR game even need to track them until a player came to a certain time and space?  They could be produced per a probability calc and not exist in any form (other than a possibility) prior to then (similar to how a creature/enemy isn't produced until a player is at a certain screen/position).  

Edited August 22, 2018 by Guest

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4979]

I think part of the difference in philosophy here is related to different definitions of what is real. Aphelion seems to be of the mind that unless it can be proven to be real than it is not. Essentially that uncertainty denies reality. However, I am more of the mind that something does not need to be provable to be real in order to be real. We can use logic to demonstrate that many things that cannot be provable to be real are likely in fact real. We cannot observe any galaxies or matter beyond our observable universe. However, we know that our observable universe is growing larger each second as more light or other things that we can detect reaches us. At some point to mankind we were not able to detect the things that we can now detect. It seems logical to me that there is likely more out there that we cannot observe yet, and it doesn't spring into reality suddenly when we are able to detect it.

[Guest]

To clarify, I don't think something needs to provable to us in order to exist.  I think that actual worlds need to be "selected" via some mechanism from the sea of potential worlds.  This selection process is what separates the actual from the potential.  I think this selection process necessarily involves properties that we associate with consciousness.

[Guest]

Interesting opinion piece on the decline of belief in moral facts, facts and opinions, and proof and truth:

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/

[JBJ 3674]

On 8/22/2018 at 5:47 PM, Aphelion said:

To clarify, I don't think something needs to provable to us in order to exist.  I think that actual worlds need to be "selected" via some mechanism from the sea of potential worlds.  This selection process is what separates the actual from the potential.  I think this selection process necessarily involves properties that we associate with consciousness.

The measurement/observation problem in standard quantum mechanics exhibits this selection process.

In a quantum two gate experiment, a quantum particle will pass through both gates as long as nothing interacts with it.  As soon a detector is attached to one of the gates, the range of possible existences change to force the particle through one gate or the other.

The detector doesn't even have to interact with the particle to effect its range of possible existences.  Even if the particle passes through the opposite gate, its behavior has changed by simply failing to interact with the detector.

 

To put this on a macro scale imagine yourself in a dark room.  There are four chairs in each corner of the room, and one apple on the chairs.  While the lights are off the one apple sits on all four chairs.  When you turn the light on and look at one chair, it is empty.  The apple now exists on three chairs.  You turn to the second corner and find it empty.  The apple now exists on two chairs.  You turn to the third corner and see the apple.  The apple now exists only on the third chair, the fourth corner does not need to be checked to be empty.

Of course in the macro experiment the apple could be said to have always been on the third chair and you were the one deducing where it was.  But this isn't true in the quantum experiment. In the quantum experiment there is apple juice left on all four chairs if the apple is removed before the lights are turned on. 

In effect, the apple is in all locations until an observation forces it to be in less, or it chooses a location being observed and abandons the others.

Edited September 13, 2018 by JBJ