The problem with all this is, that most evaluation is based upon assumptions.
No1 is that we have access to all the information, ie we only need to look to find everything. (assuming the universe is not different beyond our perception)
I tend to think that the universe is in superposition, and that as soon as an outcome occurs its lights out.😀
There is only what there is and nothing more. <<the more I think about this the stranger it seems. ie there "is" only what there is. depends on how you look at it is there anything?
I didn't think like this in the past. (Everything is transient)
Regards
M. Gregg
I would classify that more as a spiral than a circle.
It would be a bit of an understatement to say that Leibniz was a fairly bright guy. Thus, not surprisingly, Leibniz's account is more complex than my initial summary would suggest. While he held the particular conditions of material existence to be contingent, he didn't thereby hold that everything was equally contingent. Like Aristotle, Leibniz also held to the primacy of the principle of non-contradiction (which might be taken as one of his basic assumptions or presuppositions). It follows, for Leibniz, that any condition whose denial gives rise to a contradiction is necessary and any that doesn't is contingent (a nice, simple, and oddly beautiful principle). Following this, it was generally held, for example, that mathematical truths were necessary while material truths were not. Thus to borrow a famous example from Hume, it is not contradictory (logically) to claim that the sun will not rise tomorrow (but it would be contradictory to say that seven plus five does not equal twelve). Thus while Leibniz would have regarded his existence as a particular human being as contingent, nevertheless the principles of Reason and logic that he followed were held by him to be universal, necessary, constitutive conditions of logic and rational thought as such (a position that many would still defend today).
As to whether this entire line of questioning is "meaningless, self-absorbed nonsense," I would have to respectfully disagree. You personally may find it an uninteresting waste of time and energy, and I have no issue with that (for it's probably a good thing that we're not all absorbed by the same kinds of problems and issues), but to dismiss it as nonsense is quite another matter. For as the history of philosophy from Aristotle through Leibniz, Kant, Peirce and others clearly shows, this line of questioning pushes us to the very heart of reason and logic (and what it means to be rational, logical, and intelligible) and hence should be pushed as far as it possibly can (a project that I would suggest is far from complete, if complete it can ever be). I can be as 'practical' as the next person when practical is needed, but to dismiss as nothing more than "self-absorbed nonsense" a line of questioning that pushes thought to the very heart of logic and reason (and hence thought as such) seems premature to say the least.
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However,
Thought is constrained by the universe, (limited by it because it is part of it).
We are allowed to think, however what are the limitations? What are the rules of the game if they are part of a reaction and circumstance? logic only applies to the situation. (the rules of the game).
Regards
M. Gregg
I think it would be fair to say that all thought rests on prior assumptions, presuppositions, or predetermining conditions (e.g. a priori Categories). We're in general agreement there.
I certainly wouldn't hold that we have access to all possible information. For Leibniz, the only being who could be said to have access to all information would be God, but philosophically that's a complex and problematic notion, especially if you accept anything like an evolutionary view of the universe (e.g. such as C.S. Peirce evolutionary cosmology).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the idea that everything is in superposition imply that it's all already fixed in some predetermined sense (and its appearing otherwise is merely an epistemic consequence of our general state of ignorance or lack of information)? This seems to give primacy to our abstract, idealized constructions over the messy complex of phenomena we actually experience. While I think idealized abstractions are extremely important as a way of helping to model and get around in the world, if we give too much primacy to the abstractions we construct then we run the risk of what A.N. Whitehead called the "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" (where instead of taking our abstractions as a way of trying to model and explain concrete phenomena. we mistakenly take our abstractions as being more real than the concrete phenomena they were proposed to explain, e.g. because the abstract model or theory is more rationally or intellectually appealing and so on). The main problem with superposition as I understand it is that it doesn't take time or growth seriously (as an asymmetrical, incomplete, self-constructing process), but tends to dismiss it as unreal or illusory in some sense. I prefer to take time and growth seriously and if that means that our abstract models don't always work then so much the worse for those abstract constructions.
Yes I agree.
We are trying to describe a dynamic system, the problem is how do you write a dynamic description. In essence its only dynamic as it occurs.
How do you think outside of a dynamic system when you are part of it?
(All there is to know is set by the system)
Regards
M. Gregg
Well, for Leibniz the basic, primitive rules of the game would be the principles of logic and reason whereby for anything to be in a material sense it first has to be possible in a logical sense, and for anything to be in any actual sense (rather than not-be) it has to have a reason for its being the way it is. If something exists but has no reason governing or explaining its existence, then you are left saying that the existence of the thing in question is non-rational and unintelligible, a dogmatic, inexplicable fact if you will (which would imply, for Leibniz, that the existence of such things is completely and utterly irrational--a point that later existentialist philosophies of the absurd would take a strange kind of pleasure in pronouncing).
Scientific attempt to develop a theory of everything are, in a real sense, a continuation of this Leibnizian line of thought.
I agree that this is a fundamental question. In fact it is so important that C.S. Peirce used it as the basis for his theory of Pragmatism where the main problem is how we can come to understand the world and our place within it from a position that is itself a product of the conditions we are trying to explain and which provides only a partial, immanent perspective on that world. Peirce entire account of logical inference, semiotics, and so on is an attempt to create a theory of knowledge and an account of the world in general from within a partial, perspectival starting point. It's one of the things I find most attractive and compelling about Peirce's work.
The assumption is the starting point,
The idea that the potential for all there is already exists, or that everything comes from a finite point. Not from an infinite singularity forever on going.
(Where the dynamics of the system are not set and also transient).
Regards
M. Gregg
Fair enough, but you have to start inquiry from wherever you happen to find yourself in the world. I assume, for example, that we have critical capacities that will allow us to modify our assumptions as we learn and I will likely continue in this until and unless I have good reason/evidence to think otherwise.
As to the idea that everything has to be contained in the starting point, well that depends on what you mean by 'contained.' If you mean that everything must be contained in the starting point in a relation of complete identity (where B = A in some perfectly reductive sense), then that's one thing (and much of Western thought gives primacy to the principle of identity as a basic logical and ontological principle). But if you accept some notion of evolution or emergence (i.e. that there is real novelty in the world or that some conditions may not be reducible to their antecedents) then the manner in which the starting point 'contains' what follows will perhaps be best expressed in something other than a logic of identify (e.g. a logic of illation, or perhaps a relation of self-transcendence like that expressed in Nietsche's principle of the Will to Power, or Whitehead's idea of Creative Advance).
With creativity,
Is the universe creating itself, or is it a random act?
The idea of nothing in itself (A starting point) A must equal B, however for nothing to exist it would not be possible to name it and as such would be in superposition.
I agree,
That you have to start wherever you find yourself, however is this the starting point or realisation, or illation. Both of these are normally linked to logical observation. However the logical observation is linked to the level of understanding which is dynamic in nature.
Regards
M. Gregg
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Believe it or not I've actually written a few papers that deal, either directly or indirectly, with these kinds of issues (from a philosophical perspective). I can forward you some links if you're interested.
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