Towards A Clear Theory of Everything
Basic argument: Understanding is symbols or stuff that is part of the biological constitution of humans and nothing more. If something exists located somewhere in our experience then it seems unnecessary and perhaps odd that we would need to understand it even further. What more do you need to know about that thing obviously in front of you, irrespective of the other data associated with it or surrounding it? If you see the color green, is it possible to understand it any further? I am contending in this paper that this is not so. Trying to understand what we observe by looking at the thoughts and concepts is similar to trying to understand what an alligator is by analyzing the term “alligator”. It doesn’t seem like that activity would be really helpful, not counting situations involving elements like onomatopoeia. I want to take a look at some concepts discussed in philosophy and science in light of this point. It seems like reality is made of indivisible and countable things that can be displayed in a list or are “listable”, of the form “A, B, C . . . ”. I wish to make this argument in the following paper.
In
this paper I want to explore the idea that understanding when not using the
visual faculty is symbols or stuff that is part of the biological constitution
of people and nothing more than that. This is to say that there not something
like the “deep understanding” of a thing. If something exists in your
experience then you are in a sense “aware of it” and see it clearly, and any
more talk on the matter in terms of a deep understanding, that, say, may take
many years to acquire through deep study like a deep study of physics, is an
act of folly in a way. The rest of the paper is basically about an attempt to
create a one-to-one correspondence to a thing in experience and a symbol in
light of recognizing that thoughts are just symbols and nothing more than that.
If
thoughts are just symbols like the words we speak and write with, then there
would not be any "conceptual difficulties" or “concepts that are hard
to understand". It seems like we could say that the facts in reality tally
to a certain amount, and you either get or don’t get (for it either exists
immediately in front of you obviously or does not) any given particular
irreducible fact. This absurdity of the contrary opinion is shown by thinking
that there is something deep and difficult to understand about the color green
or some other color. You either see that color or you don’t, and that’s the
long and short of it it would seem, even if a poetry-driven Rothko is socially
obligating you look at a canvas for hours with just a few moody, dawn-warm
colors, to get you to “deeply understand” its colors and tones with force,
panache, and erudition. For many, it was none other than their moms who were
the ones who taught them to use terms that correspond with things that are
observed. We come out of the wombs as wasteful, good-for-nothing dandys ready
to sit on our behinds helplessly and absorb factoid after factoid. This needy
situation of tuteleage has a selective advantage, as you may be able to
imagine. There is no reason, however, that you can’t continue this process of
learning, perhaps by creating a new set of symbols to correspond to the things
we observe, and parent ourselves, that is, unless your moms will still put you
in time out for using new symbols which didn’t get met with her official stamp
of approval.
As
long as we hold to the idea that thoughts are just the symbol that humans
happen to use in line with their biological makeup, we can make some intuitive
and native seeming sense by creating a one to one correspondence between
thoughts and other things as well as words and other things, or at least try
our best to make that happen. If we create one-to-one correspondence with
things, then we will have a situation involving a word per thing, which in
theory would look a little like Leibniz's principle the identity of
indiscernibles. There would be one term for each thing, where each one of those
things would be singular and discernibly different from other single things we
observe. These would be indivisible things, and countable, and we would have
“indivisible” terms for in correspondence with each one of them, considered
indivisible because they match up in correspondence with things that are
indivisible. Of course we can also create terms that have a one-to-many
relationship to things, which seems to have an ease and inured pragmatism
considering that we deal with stuff we have gerrymandered off as objects with
our unclean humanity and things that we consider made of smaller parts of
larger, gestalt entities.
In
this paper let's focus on some particular topics that have been of interest to
philosophers such as space, time, cause, and consciousness. Don't make me feel
like I'm the only one who finds these topics interesting. I think there is a
reason why these topics have seemed so interesting to people, including
historical scientists like Newton and Einstein. They seem abnormal and
mysterious, and these things seem much unlike every objects, like knock-off
tickle me elmos and Jessica Simpson-themed fidget spinners. Let's see if we can
create a one-to-one with these things, to see what facts and what's fiction in all
of this. In theory those words or labels can be countable, where a number is
also a historically serendipitous symbol that gets paired in correspondence
with other things. In this essay I commit the logical error of describing
multiple things as instances of some, ghoulish, glowy "type" which
varnishes all of it's token instances with it's spooky, oozing substance. I
commit this hypocrisy knowingly as a convention and also as ladder to be kicked
away, after it has been used to one go over and through and above the
conceptual obstacles in our path.
Keeping
in mind that thoughts are just symbols and analyzing them is similar to the
word analyzing the words “alligator” or “bird” to understand those respective
species showing us something about the creatures they correspond to, let’s take
a look at a few concepts which are central to philosophical inquiry. It would
say that it is helpful to say that the dismissal of the questions I bring up
with the knee-jerk and uninteresting response “well, that is philosophy so you
can’t know the answer to question either way” is not particularly helpful
dictum. The one person who said this to me in life is the only person I have
genuinely and deeply in the fibre of my being wanted to slap with the back of
my glove in my whole life. If something exists, then it exists and corresponds
with an affirmative assertion, whether the idea for it came from science,
philosophy, or some other field, which after all reflects a non-consilience
minded division based on arbitrary directions of human intellectual exploration
throughout history. To me, this conversation we are having is one of science,
and the things I am bringing up are either scientific or not, observable or
not, or probable in terms of their existence or not. It is helpful to clarify
and be exacting, regardless of the field you are in, and that is what I intend
to do in this piece.
Most
people have conceded that we as humans are in a carestian situation where are
only aware of our own existence and not the existence of any other person or
thing. We carry on, though, perhaps with a dismissive attitude towards the
point, because it seems to us or most not practical or realistic. We still
think it makes sense in respects to clarity or well-formedness to talk about things
existing in other locations outside of the stuff that is located “here” and
evident. However if you don’t observe it or can’t match up to a label than
talking about “other things”, beyond not knowing if it is true or not, is also
not well-formed. The things we would put into a list do not all share a common
property that would correspond with the label “things”, and so to even begin to
talk about other things, including by saying something of seemingly low ontic
commitment, “if other things existed whose properties we didn’t know” would not
make sense. This makes the Cartesian situation all the more insular. It would
be noted though that, say, if 50 things existed here, and we had 50 labels for
them, then we also would not be making the claim that “only 50 things” exist;
the qualification of “only”, important to logic and a sundry assortment of
other things, is something that is sometimes assumed without being made
explicit in conversation.
I came to the idea that irreducible elementary aspects when I noticed that when I thought that a given thing observed had many properties, like, say, the color green having the property of existence, color, and green, all at once and would create a mental labels for green, that I would see something like three labels going on a thing that in reality seemed singular in some sense, and I would get some message back that this was awkward or crowded, as in awkward in terms of being flush in space or awkward in respects to syntax. This made me think that things are simpler than the unchecked cavalcade of concepts would have us believe, and it seems like if there is some group of things here, then I am experience basic properties of things, that are irreducible in some way. What else would they be? Individual things are indivisible and can be put in a list or are “listable”, like “A, B, C” where A is a name or label or term for a particular indivisible thing. The following describes a flow chart or simple algorithm in deciding whether a term belongs on the list of the form “A, B, C . . .”:
Description of a helpful flow chart: does the term correspond with something irreducible and simple? Then put it into the list for the theory of everything. Does the term, conversely, stand for a complex grouping of things? Then see if you can exchange it for a set of terms that stand for a set of irreducible and simple things. For instance, the term “Europe” stands for a complex set of things that can be exchanged for many simple, irreducible things. If you can do this, keep the terms that results from the exchange. If you can’t for some reason, then don’t include the terms on the list, and perhaps try to figure out why this is so. Does the reason have to some unusual property of the things? Is it a reflection of our all-too-human thinking scheme? It seems helpful to pursue questions such as these ones.
Now let’s take a look at some common topics in philosophy and science considering what I brought up here. I will take a look at space, time, and cause, the topics that were important to Kant, as well as other things that seem relevant to a theory of everything and efforts to make it clear.
Subject Predicate Structure In Reality
If
reality is to be described by a list like “A, B, C . . .” then it will not
contain descriptions like “G is made of H, I, and J” which is copula structure
that rears its ugly but well-meaning head in human languages, and it will not
contain descriptions like “E(H, I, J)” because the existential quantifier of
“e(x)” which translates colloquially into the phrase “there exists” does not
refer to anything and so is something we would exclude from our language when
our goal is to describe things with precision. It seems to follow from the idea
of “a single thing”, that individual and indivisible things simply exist and
correspond with a single term which can be said to be the symbol for them”.
This of course is just another idea, and is maybe equally errant to the idea
that we began analyzing. It seems to me that when I look at reality in a bare
way, and lessen the thoughts, which again seem to just be a particular symbol
that is used by the human mind and are nothing more or particularly special
beyond that, that reality has something I would customarily stamp with the
description “multiple things” that occur which I could match up based on a rule
of symbol production to multiple symbols that I could place into a list.
What
this would mean is that there is no such thing as “many instances of a single
property or quality”, like “many instances of the color green”. Instead there
would just be one thing, the color green, which happens to be a very large
entity seemingly distributed throughout the universe, that is paired in some
way with many spatial locations or locations. In other words there would be a list
that would be have the items on it “green, location 1, location 2, location 3 .
. . .” which would show the idea that things could be individuated and
understood separately.
The
idea that “things have to come in clumps of discernable different things” seems
suspicious and all-too-human. I suspect that descriptions like “green at
location A”, readily reduce to individual things. I don’t think this because I
think that analyzing the notion of thing shows that in reality things are
individual, but instead when I quiet my thoughts, not completely unlike what a
religious meditator or contemplative would do, I think that I see a reality
that has multiple, discernable different properties. I would think of these
properties as irreducible, such as the colors yellow and red, I think if I were
to look at it honestly or naively without the received acculturation of
science, which may say something like, given its current zeitgeist, “the yellow
you see is really made up of a collection of small atoms which somewhere create
the impression you are seeing in ‘middle world’”. It seems like a theory of
everything will account for all worlds and perceptions, whether small, middle,
or large, and I suspect that that taxonomy to begin with is misleading and
unhelpful in some way.
One of the points of this section is that the definition of is, is nothing. “Is” does not have anything that corresponds to a definition. If I could create my own language and was looking for a parsimony among its terms, I would create many listable, noun-like entities and not ever invoke “is” to correspond to something observed. I believe that that there are no nots, no ises, no ors in reality, no ifs, ands, or buts. These words are about other words that stand for things that we observe as existing that we use as a creative conceptual syntax to describe all the boring things we do under the sun.
Space
If
the point above is true that nothing in reality exhibits a subject predicate
structure and there is no such thing as “an instance of some quality embodied
in a particular individual thing”, then it would also make sense that the
property of “space” would also not be something that is shared by many things
so that they would be “instances of space”. The same would also be true of spatial
dimensions. It wouldn’t make sense to say that multiple points embody, exhibit,
or demonstrate various attributes of dimension. When I reflect with candor on
my experience--as I am walking around town flaunting the latest in fall
fashion--I notice that I don’t exist in a perfectly 3-dimensional cube where
the x, y, and z dimensions all extend to the same amount or length in an
obvious way and each spatial cell is nice and neat and orderly. My experience
of space is more like oblong and choppy and scalene and oddly vantaged like
artistic renderings, like Monet and Cezanne and other impressionists who try to
capture how things appear to an individual and their idiosyncratic perspective.
I suspect that I am not the only one who experiences space in this irregular
way, many have reported as much, and it should be noted that my experience of
space and your experience of space are all part of the same reality. If someone
had the right equipment it seems they could figure out what is happening in
your mind and it seems like they would consider that stuff as part of their
reality, and not in some “other reality”, which is syntactically a bogus
definition at the outset. This seems like a reducto ad absurdam of various
formats and clades of relativism.
In
his writings, it is evident that the philosopher Wittgenstien thought about the
odd asymmetry shown in the seeming fact that you can have many instances of the
same color green at different spatial locations but not different instances of
the same spatial location “at” the quality of green. Could it be that the
latter is possible and happens to not be observed as a matter of mere
happenstance what this world empirically ended up being? Or does it seem to
happen because of a certain way we frame things? When finding a way to talk
about objects occupying space systematically, we may be prone to a description
like “A at X, A at Y, A at Z, B at F, B at G, B at H . . .” perhaps
because of all those responsible years of analytic geometry. But if we apply
the principle above about there being one term per thing, then it seems like we
can talk about things that are said to exist in space and the space which is
like a slot or box itself separately, and that the objects in the first
category and the spatial locations in the second category could all be
catalogued in some list of the form “A, B, C . . .” . The term “at” used in the
description at the top of the paragraph either corresponds with some spatial
data or if it doesn’t it is just a convention of notation indifferent to
referential, semantic correspondence. If it is the later and not the former
then it is to be struck off without a moment’s disreputable hesitation from the
description list.
If
each spatial location only leads us create one symbolic designation for it,
then it should also be true that a given point does not exhibit multiple
dimensions, and it shouldn’t correspond with, say, three number values that
correspond with height, width, and length, respectively. On standard
2-dimensional graph, any point can be determined either by a Cartesian
coordinate like “(X, Y)” or, alternatively, a description of polar coordinates.
This situation is 6 in one half a dozen in the other as far as the act of
determining points goes. This makes the idea that there are definitely
dimensions that occur at points of space to be seem arbitrary, because it seems
like some whimsy in the development and lineation of history made it so that we
tend to use the standard coordinate system instead of the polar coordinate
system, which uses a degree and length that’s extends to determine a point on a
plane. We could create a system that starts at any point (and not the center)
and have it extend according to some degree, which seems to indicate that we
could have as many systems as points that are out there. Perhaps reality does
not agree with this arbitrary system in terms of what it constituted of and
further does not feel incumbent upon it to follow our conventions of
description.
It
would seem that contradiction could achieve a solid definition by the idea that
“only one thing can occupy a given place in space”, so that two rival
descriptions, each of which claims that a different thing is in the same place,
cannot both be true at one time. However, if it is true that everything thing
can be listed separately, then this rule should not be true of things, because
there would be no such thing as “occupying” such that an unusual description
like “a thing occupying a location of space” would not make sense. If this were
true then it seems like the things we thought occupied space would actually
have no spatial attributes, perhaps no size. Space, size, dimensions, and
another other terms would describe spatial locations if they took the role of
describing anything at all. Space could just be spoken of as particular
location designations, like “X, Y, Z” . . . which are individual terms that
name the things that we usually refer to in one fell and blithely
indiscriminate swoop as “spatial points”. In reality, each spatial point would
get its own name, and there is no sharing of any descriptions or predication or
adjectives.
What
this would amount to is that there is simply one thing which can be called
“greenness” that appears in some way to be multiple because of the way in which
it coincides with space, though of course “the way in which it coincides” would
not correspond with a special category of existence but would be a phrase that
itself would correspond with things that can be described in terms of symbolic
variables. If this were so, it may be possible that we may be more connected to
one another than common sense would lead us to believe, such that seemingly
spooky action at a distance is not all that spooky or distant, but follows
logically and sensibly from the fact color is a single entity distributed
wherever it is that it shows up and shows its true colors.
In
short, it seems like spatial locations are things that can be individual and
indivisible in a way so that they are to be talked about separate from objects that
occupy as well as other spatial locations in order to make sense made of them.
A single thing which we usually label a “spatial location” gets one and only
one label, some singular ostensive grunt, like “X” or “Y” or “Z”, and no other
term would be necessary to describe it or create semantic correspondence in
respects to it. Saying something like “space comes in a clump with other
things” so that the “A at X” format is necessary seems to be odd because “comes
in” is somewhat vague. Is it an all or nothing deal, such either those three
things are in reality or one of them, and is this because one of some or many
of them is a sufficient cause of the others, perhaps by way of a tautology,
tight at the tug? Until “comes in” is made sense of, it is the penalty box of
being nonsensical. Guilty until proven innocent as far as I’m concerned. The
line of reasoning also suggests that space cannot be understood in a way
separated from the contents that are said to occupy it.
The spatial entities would not together neither make circles or squares, since each of those things are complex. If this is true, then it would be the fact that makes it pointless to attempt drawing perfect circles. Perhaps it is helpful to think of those things as having a different size altogether and it may be misleading to think of indivisible entities as small which I think it the tendency to do first, because maybe our perception of them as large means that they are “molecular” and not “atomic” in respects to their make-up and/or clumping. Assigning them a size may not be helpful because there may be some element of reductio ad absurdum we could possibly list them as there are two indivisible and independent facts, a thing and then its size. This makes it seem like “size” may be a concept that we place on things as well, however if size really exists then if we correctly apply our efforts it should show up in the language that we conclude is accurate. Of course, if it is a concept then it exists since concepts exist must exist in some sense if they are, for example, placed on things. Another theme I am inching towards is that reality may be a lot more straightforward and unremarkable than we had first imagined that it was.
Time
Often
in my attempt to understand time, the concept slips out of my hands, like a
flimy and flippant salmon militant in its intent to return the stream that it
was taken from. Sometimes it seems like a sense of change or flux exists, and
sometimes when I try to pay attention to what is occuring before me, it seems
like time is a stubborn delusion and a constant apparational fib and something
that falls apart under the weight of inspection like a feeble Hooverville of
cards. We have a sense of time because of the subjective moment-to-moment flux
that seems to be constantly a part of our experience. That is basically the
definition of time. It seems like this can be adjudicated by attempting and
failing to come up with a formal description of what we see, as I think happens
in the analysis below.
If
I would try to construct a description of time, that fleeing large game I wish
to spear, I would want to say something like “I perceive something definitely
that is changing” or “it is the occurrence of change that is somehow made of
many things that themselves do not change”. This is on the understanding that I
am referring to something like observable “spacetime events” involving ordinary
and observable objects and not thinking of objects and things that endure in
their definition irrespective of whatever time is doing. Maybe you would
describe time differently, and maybe in truth it should be described
differently. I don’t want to make the assumption that we all experience it in
the same exact way. I am making the assumption, which seems like a good one
when considered on its own with a fresh and unadulterated perspective, that
once something exists as an event that it can’t at some future point in time
not exist, or that it is definitionally nonsensical to talk about something
“existing and then not existing”, like some illogical game of ontological
peekaboo. It seems, though, that with the description I attempted above that it
seems like I am claiming “I observe something that both is changing and also is
not changing” in essence. This seems to violate the Aristotle’s law of
noncontradiction, which states “¬(p ∧ ¬p)”, which, when translated to in less
cryptic although less enjoyable symbols, is “nothing can both be and not be”.
When we move from a description of “being” to a particular adjective-like
descriptions, something cannot both be changing and also not changing. It
doesn’t seem to make sense that we are perceiving both of those things together
at one time or in one observation.
Let’s
look at a few variations of this idea at risk of beating a dead horse, which,
really, is the last thing I want to do. It seems like if I am perceiving
something solidly and definitely, but the thing that I am perceiving in change,
which is not solid and not definite, then it seems to run into the scenario and
fender bender of contradiction, “not both something being definite and
something not being definite”. We could even say from the perspective of
contradiction that “things change” is also a contradiction, even though it
sounds like a sentence that could show up in everyday conversation or a
profound political speech if it was followed by a 4 second pause. Yet another
way of looking at this is, if change is a thing it is one or many properties
that can be listed, then that list itself, if it maintains its legal status of
proper description, would not be something itself that changes. Change if it is
existing would both in some way have the predicates of attributes of “change
and not change” involved in its existence, and what this would mean is this
definition itself would topple over by the overdone weight of its own
irrationality according to the law of non-contradiction as I described
above.
The
leitmotifs of these different points is that if we tried to describe time then
it would seem to amount to a group of descriptions at least one of which would
be the adjective-like description of “changing”, which in some ways would pair
with a description that is related to something “not changing”. This is a
contradiction in the classic sense, through and through.
When
I look back at my perception and sense of reality after considering this point
about contradiction, things seem to be more solid and there seems to be less
flux, as if all there is space without there being any occurance of time at
all. This is what I suspect is true. I also experience my mind having a need to
try to prop back up an intuitive sense of time after I see it is its analyzed,
man-behind-the-curtain form. It is tempting to think of time as related to
space, like it is “new space occuring at the frontier of the universe”. It
seems to be something like a new spatial locations or spatial cells unfurling
themselves and being cemented into the boundary or frontier of the universe
that we may exist at in respects to change and creation. It seems if “change”
is happening here, that we are at something like frontier of the expansion of
the universe even if it does not look like a frontier as we would see it on a
2-dimensional map. However, this seems to be will-o-the-wisp, and using the
term “new” seems like it is a way to let “time” stowaway. It the same thing,
except in a cheap tuxedo. I suspect that the concept of time is difficult to
describe because it is actually not there at the outset. I may be wrong about
this. Why would it be that there is this thing, “time”, that occurs right in
front of us and part of our experience that withstands the fevered maelstrom of
Cartesian doubt but is something that is still so elusive to understanding and
definition? This seems odd, but it could be what is true. Odd things are
sometimes true, and there is no rule that reality can’t seem odd to us.
My sense is that “time” is a totally nonsense term, and that all there is are
the locations, which would correspond with one and only one term, which are the
things that normally fit under the term “space”.
Time seems to be a glimmering, like Polaris twinkling in the cold sky (like God winking back at us?) that gives the impression that one thing is becoming another thing in some way or that things occur one after the other in succession. Even the idea of one thing becoming another thing a “thing changing” considering for both of those that thing has solid definition, is a tissue of nonsense. No matter how sophisticated the language we use, including a delta symbol to indicate change in a quantifiable manner, or abstruse physics equations, we are either claiming with our words that “time” is existing or we are not. As I have indicated in this section, I suspect that this sort of thing does not exist.
Cause
It
is thought that there are many occurrences or states of cause that exist in the
universe. Cause is like logical implication that occurs in the
actually-existing and not-merely-theoretical universe. The states of course
ostensibly are things of the form “A-->B” which translates into everyday
terms as “B if A” or “B exists if A exists in the first place”. Logical
implication and cause are two sides of the same frustrating, impish,
hoodwinking coin, evident because we use the language of logical implication to
talk about cause, sometimes in a vulgar and no-good act of conflation. It would
seem that if something has the identity that it does, seperate in terms of
definition from something else which would have another identity altogether,
then they would be the sort of things that do not bring about one another. If A
caused B by definition, then it would seem the A and B are part of the same
thing. Sometimes we use “imply” in a sense that is only probable, such as when
we say that solitary oodle of blood pools implies that someone murdered someone
else. This of course would not be implication in the sense of totally
dependable necessity because in the universe there are exceptions to this rule,
like when someone sheds blood from a bad fall in the bathroom, the room that
statistics show is the resident frenemy of the house. The main point I am
trying to make is that the unique identity would mean that it is not caused or
necessitated by a sufficiently separate thing.
If
cause exists, then it exists and can be talked about in a way similar to things
like elements and organic molecules. It’s either something that exists in
reality or it isn’t. You can’t have your cake and eat it, even if it’s your
birthday and it happened to land on Easter. Perhaps if this is seems odd or
vague to you, and your mind oscillates back and forth between thinking of cause
as solidly existing and thinking of it is as something that is less solid, like
some wavering, waif-wispy thing, that is because it was never there to begin
with in any substantive way to begin with. Perhaps it is something like a
concept that your mind places on reality like a Kantian concept. Considering
biological history, the concept may have been an idea that arose from some
intervening intermediate object that bound objects together to make tools, or
like some small tab-shaped thing that was sticky and stuck things together. It
may just be an instinctual exercise in the pathetic fallacy to posit a cause in
between things when it does not exist. Sometimes we hold beliefs that make it
seem like we believe that what are really the contents of our mind exist all
over the universe. I believe that “cause” is the type of joint that connects
the flecks of matter strewn everywhere may be an unfortunate case of this.
Scientifically, it is not helpful to mistake a label that we place on something
as a thing that actually locally ornaments the thing we are discussing and
examining.
Again,
if everything is truly itself, and possesses a separate enough identity from
the things around it, then it would seem that nothing follows from any other
thing. It seems that everything that exists is an individuated and can
accordingly be talked about in that way. This point may be enough to invalidate
cause to your mind. There are either many things, one thing, or no things, and
it seems like we can create symbols that match up to these things in one-to-one
correspondence, at least until we run out of symbols, a resource apparently
worth stockpiling. If it had to be that there was an event “A->B” that
happened together--you either get all three of those things or nothing at
all--then it would seem like reality is made of things that come in a wildly
colored family valu three-pack, in these ungainly tripartite litters and bogus
threefers. Intuition seems to favor instead the idea that things can be teased
out and individually packaged however. When we think of things this way,
though, it makes it seem like causes are things that can exist on their own,
like there could simply be a 5 mile stretch of just causes and no mundane
objects that would otherwise be sandwich in between any two of them, or that
there could be a universe that is made of nothing but acts of cause. This seems
absurd, and makes states of cause altogether doubtable.
Something
like De morgan’s law, “~(P or Q)=~P and ~Q”--slippery, serpentine, and
elusive-- tempts us with with an emotion headed towards incorrect thinking to
believe that there is something like logical implication, because it seems that
one of the phrases or linguistic conventions implies the other, since both
describe the same group of states by generically talking about a situation
involving consideration of two objects A and B. In truth, all that can be said
it is that, it is the cultural norm, to attach both “not A and B” and “A or B”
to the same situations or states of mind that demonstrate possible combinations
or arrangements. These written symbols as well as the accompanying mental
states exist in some pattern in reality connected with the things themselves
they refer to. This statement can cover it, without referring to one of those
statements causing one another, which after all are as inert and uneventful and
unmoving as scribbled squiggles scattered on a page.
It would seem then that there is no state of cause in the universe as well as no beginning cause as the mind inclines us to believe, with a sense of misty, settling ancientness. The later point seems like it is finds sufficient grounding by the classic point of there being no infinite regress, which can be seen in Aquinas as well as the Kalam Cosmological argument. We can simply say when there is much correlation that would customarily make us want to posit a causation as well that they are things that merely correlate, in groups of two or otherwise. This description is sufficient to capture things without talking about the ghostly widgets of cause who are the unnecessary and hateable middle men of the universe. I feel forced to this conclusion, as if I were spanked on the head with insight by gravity itself.
Spectrum
There
does not seem to be a sense to the spectrum of color, in the sense of green
being more like yellow and blue than the other colors, or any other type of
spectrum for that matter, outside of a discussion of color. I suspect for many
that when they see yellow and green, that they seem close to one another, and
that this is even more true for something like dark green and light green. I
experience something like this also, however when I think about it in a close
way with caution’s advice and providence, I think all that can be said of these
colors is that a single term corresponding with their single quality, and any
other label is adding something other than the label that names the thing. It
seems saying that “light green is similar to dark green” is referring to some
fact that is includes both of these things, and therefore, with some regretful
abstractness, occurs in some place other than the instance of light green or
dark green or perhaps occurs at all locations where those two observed hues
are. The claim does not seem to be a clear one in that respect. All that can be
logically said about those two hues, respectively, is a single term “light
green” and “dark green” for each color respectively, and nothing else. Resist the
itch, put the Ed Hardy pen down, the talking should stop there. That is the
point at which shutting up may be helpful. This includes other thoughts or
labels, like “similar” or “next to” or “more similar to y than to z”, and so
on. This would mean that there is no space for a term to talk about how light
green is also related to dark green in addition to its primary status of just
being light green, and that sort of talk would be inaccurate and silliness
incarnate and bupkis.
This would also apply to other spectrums as I indicated above, such as the overtone series in music. All that could be said of the note middle C and the D that is said to be to close to middle C is their individual phenomenological qualities, and nothing else. This including saying something like “The D close to middle C and much closer to middle C then that A note immediately above those two other notes”. It seems if this is true that the feeling that middle C is close in its subjectively experienced quality to the D next would be some tricky prestidigitation of the mind. This seems hard to accept when considering green and light green, but it seems to be the case when we adopt the approach of “atomic” or irreducible descriptions as I am advocating here as being accurate. All you can do is describe a thing with a single term and any other term, if it is not a synonym for that single term, must be cast to the wayside like it was something rank and awfulized and pestilent. This is the first step towards reason and clarity, and hope my points are showing up on the spectrum of being engaging, even if it is to a small degree.
Consciousness and Similarity
If
the point is true about any other talk besides a single term being set into
correspondence with a thing is bunk as frick, then there should not be a single
term like “consciousness” which corresponds thoughts and emotions. Just as
much, there should not be the words “thoughts” and “emotions”, which are
thought of as categories of classes that apply to many things we observe, even
if even if the things typically under those terms are the intimate aspects of
our consciousness. I am inclined to think this also because sometimes I have
sensations which cannot automatically tell whether I would call them a
kinaesthetic sensation or an emotion, or even set them free in another class
altogether and let them be their own animal. The entities that we would name
with our normally occurring terms are to be given a single name and they would
not be given the general labels "thought" or "emotion" or
terms from any other similar taxonomy. We can refer to those things that we
normally would call thoughts and emotions and sense-data with the single term
and in good conscience discard those general category terms including the
awesome sounding term "consciousness".
If one and only one term corresponds with a given indivisible and basic entity, then even describing two things as “similar” or for that matter “very similar” or “different” would not be referring to anything. It doesn’t make sense to say, while pointing at things, “look Johnny, there is the quality of the experience of green, and look, there, right next to the first thing I pointed out, there is its property of being similar to dark green and light green and the other greens”. It seems to me that things are simpler than that. I suspect that we place two things in general categories, such as “the general property of green that green, dark green, and light green all qualify as” are pragmatic way to clumping things together which has a biological advantage. My guess is that there is selective value in believing that the light green and dark green are in the same category, perhaps because we would had a tendency then to think that there are both many entities of dark green and light green in reality, of a high amount, in a way that is similar to induction involving the extrapolation that there must be a high amount of swan-ness conjoined with whiteness if a certain number of white, swan-like things are observed. This is of course just a guess, held with a light-hearted conviction.
Compression
There
seems to be no compression of data in respects to modeling when using terms
that are intended for one-to-one correspondence. You can make something smaller
that we take as a model of something larger, like a model of a library that is
meant to guide people to construct a library of a much larger size. However,
the smaller library does not perfectly model the larger library, since all of
its parts would not have a one-to-one correspondence with the larger parts of
the library. This follows from the fact that the model would have less atoms
than the larger, actual library where atoms of course are parts of the model.
A
form of compression, admittedly less grand, seems sometimes to be achieved in
some way by the use of the logical qualifiers like “all” and “no” as well as
the natural numbers. Things like infinity as well as instructions like “all xs”
or “no ys” or even directions like east or west are instructions that continue
to advocate for a particular action or activity, and are never fully satisfied
by that which is already done in obedience to them. They are always
dissatisfied, like a political party that moves their goal posts of desire once
they get what they want.
The
only situation in which we could have symbols corresponding to reality is if
all the things in reality are type of thing that we would call a symbol and
there was a one-to-one correspondence of symbol to something else (if all those
symbols stand for the same thing, say, then a total description or TOE would
not be achieved it seems). This would mean that if you could show that there is
one thing that is not symbolic somewhere near of far then it seems like a TOE
or GUT could not be achieved--and this seems in reality to be the sad and
sorrowful case. For instance, there are some trees that are not symbols for
anything--then you would have all the ingredients to foil an effort to create a
theory of everything.
Even if we constructed a theory of everything using things like the qualifications of “all” and “no” and numbers--for instance there is some logically possible large universe that “all whiteness occurs in conjunction with swanness, and there is a million instances of swanness”--the theory would not account for the myriad of spatial instances, which each are a unique things where all those things of a high amount distribute over in some way. This could frustrate the amount of things that function like symbols in the universe. It seems for the universe to have a symbol with one-to-one correspondence it would have to be something that is of the class of things that are like a circle of standing people but instead of people it is symbols, where each symbol stands for the symbol that is to the immediate right of it. You can use a description like F=Ma to describe objects and their motion, but if someone was just given that equation without being told all of the spatial locations where the things that correspond with those equations exist, then it seems like we would not have enough information to reconstruct the phenomena. This seems like an important point worth the thoughtful consideration. This demonstrates the point about the difficulty of compression that I am trying to make. It some sense it seems like it happens to be the case that this is not possible. So those are my thoughts on compression, or as much thought as I could squeeze into words.
Infinity
There
is nothing that we observe that is infinite and the idea that we have of
infinity is itself not infinite in all probability but something that is
apparently finitely countable, just as the symbol for infinity, the figure-8
laying supine on its side, is also countable, it seems, by way of print pixels
or separate atoms. I suspect that our propensity we have of child-like
fascination at the idea of infinity is something that ultimately indicates that
it is a nonsense word the way it is commonly used, even if mathematicians like
Cantor have formalized a definition for it. If the thoughts and other things
that process information in our mind are finite and countable, doesn’t that
mean that we would not be able to understand or encounter something that is
actually infinite? This is an important point. If there was something that we
suspected was infinite and we attempted to try to count it, we would not be
able to finish that activity by the time our life ended, and effectively would
not live to tell the heroic tale. A formal definition of infinity could be that
there is “always a higher number” which is similar to the conclusion of
Euclid’s proof about there always will be a higher prime than any prime that
you are thinking of in the moment. It is to be noted that it doesn’t seem to
make sense that there is a fence-like bound, some dyke whose circumference
torquates oddly all over the universe that blocks all things from expanding in
terms of their amount. It doesn’t seem like we don’t observe some rim-like
thing like this in the universe, and it seems somewhat absurd at the outset, if
only because something that is bound it seems it conceptually obligated to be
paired with something else, namely, that which it functions as a bound for,
according to the same point I made above about cause. Usually bounded things
are thought of as complex in some way, but it seems like all things should be
able to be talked about as simple, indivisible, straightforward units. This
lack of a bound or state of boundlessness seems like it could be the key
ingredient to allow infinity to exist. However, even under these conditions, it
seems like things would still be countable, and correspond with some
theoretical number, because reality apparently has multiple things that are the
sort of things we would co-opt with a thought that indicates a number amount.
Infinity
can be thought of as something similar to an algorithm whose instructions never
terminate, like something that follows in accordance with the recursive
equation X(n+1)=X(n)+1. Just because a thing like this would be an instruction
that never halts and is never quaffed in terms of its needy and bottomless in
its requirement for more symbol manipulation or action, doesn’t necessarily
mean that something exists that is infinite or that the function or instruction
is infinite. If the universe ends at some point, then this dull and uninspiring
task of continuing to add more and more to a number would be interrupted the
stale expiration of the universe, which would wreck all the lackluster
arithmetic activity with a swift and unmistakable kick in the rear.
It seems that if things exist and can correspond with a list that there are always countable if there is enough bit size of whatever things are considered doing the counting. It is definitely logically possible that this could be “compressed” into or made to correspond with a number, using some symbol which is parsimonious like a phonetic symbol. This point I make here, which may seem already obvious to some readers, seems like something worth discussing since the idea of there being infinite things is something posited by physicists from time to time. If I am sounding obnoxious, then we can be grateful at least about the notion that things are not infinite.
Subject-predicate things
If reality is to be described by a list like “A, B, C . . .” then it will not contain descriptions like “G is made of H, I, and J” which is copula structure that shows up in human languages, or it will not contain descriptions like “E(H, I, J)” because the existential quantifier of “e(x)” which can translate colloquially into the phrase “there exists” does not refer to anything and so is something we would want to exclude when our goal is describing things precisely.
The self
It only takes watching so many movies about time travel where some protagonist like Marty Mcfly engages in rough-and-tumble fistacuffs with their past selves to realize that it is plausible that we are actually a different person in a very literal way from who were were in the past, including who we were a few seconds ago. I see in myself mysterious shroud and confusing defensiveness in respect to understand ideas like the self or consciousness--”put down all these books boy, what’s all this studying going to amount to anyway?”-- and I see this sometimes mirrored in other people and philosophers. It may be that, the mind on some level level knows that the sense of self is not accurate in some way, as well as other ideas that follow subject predicate phrasing like an object when understood with the idea of object permanence. The self seems likely it could plausibly be a collection of thoughts and emotions that occurs in a given moment of life or observation that occur “in the present” and not in other designations of time. This seems to be somewhat faithful to the original definition, however if the idea of the self includes some one thing with many predicates where the predicates span over many designations of time then I think that it does not exist. Again, following the algorithm at the top, if the term does not correspond with a simple term, then it may be nonsensical or have something fishy about it.
Change
I think all there are are things that definitely exist. I do not think that change happens. I think the phrase “a thing that changes” is a contradiction. I think if a thing exists then it “always” exists, I don’t think it makes sense to talk about there being something that exists that then ceases to exist at some later point. It seems better to focus on describing time than change because it seems to me that the thoughts that are considered at least by some substantial amount of people when they think of the term “time” compared to change. If you can imagine a stupid sounding voice saying something like “well, of course, there is stuff and then there is the change of the stuff” and if you see something that seems flimsy within yourself as you think about those words or similiar words, it may be that the notion of hcnage is not a direct description of what youy experience.
Action
The existence of verbs I think tempts the mind to think that there is a separate category of stuff besides things, which correspond with nouns. I think that it is more helpful to think about things as if they are noun-like, although I think this is also not accurate and is a ladder to be kicked away. There are not actions that are not things.
Cause
This is something I go into with more depth in another paper. There is an argument that it is likely that certain things affect other things because the probability that something of this degree of staggering order could not be created by many elements. I think this is an appeal to order and is not well-formed.
Law
One can merely describe the object
itself observed without positing anything extra. Have a thought or image or
whatever thing that is being used to understand correspond with the objective
in one-to-one correspondence. All else is folly. They are labels that help us
think that things have an oomff from the outside pushing them. Perhaps they are
helpful, but perhaps we lack the imagination to recognize that things that have
properties of motion well on their own without some external push. If
everything needs an external push then how externally pushes the first external
push we would invoke? An ignominious seemingly infinite regress seems to
result. What a shame. Occam’s razor and a love for all that is good and parsimonious
compels us to merely create a model of the object we observe without also
posting some ghostly statute that
Hovers directly above like a guardian angel that would win helicopter moms at their own game.
force
We are told that there are a handful of fundamental forces, the weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravity. Forces are thought to be things like local pushes and pulls and well as spooky over distances. Further, it is relayed that all these forced “were one” and emulsified into the forces as we know them today, like a god dividing into many emanations, And these are things that compel other things which we observe to be occurring in a pattern of motion as a function of time. Gravity, for instance, is the continual occurrence of observations like a thing or object being in one position, and then, later in another, which can be captured in images of mathematical formalisms like “F=Ma”. It good enough to describe the things that exist without going into extravagant expenditures of theory, and forces posting things that go bump in the night. Perhaps you are catching onto a theme: it is always good to hold a firm over oneself in making sure that descriptions are concrete. Look at what it is here, concretely, in the word called “physical”, and not in some other ethereal candyland; if your mind wanders to some heaven of mathematics, consider that you have not wandered too far away from the ordardinary place you were at just a moment ago.
Conclusion
These
points are largely connected with the idea that understanding is simply a set
of symbols, as arbitrary as “spider” standing for the arachnid that
self-importantly made your bathroom the site of its summer get away. Outside of
onomatopoeic words like “vroom” and “hiss”, it is thought that the pairings of
sound and objects are capricious accidents of culture. Most of the topics that
we approached here are on the assumption that the obvious reality that we
experience irrespective of whatever state the thoughts we have happen to be in,
are something we could create a one-to-one pairing of term for and thing and by
recreating ostensive pairing between term and thing or thought and thing that
we apparently did during childhood. calling a particular approach “correct” is
a matter of going along with the rules that we start out with in terms of what
labels we will create based on what is that we find when observing
things.
Sometimes
I can get the impression that reality does not exist at all. That may sound odd
to you, or even like an insane thing to consider, I can experience that thought
and honestly consider it, with an honest intent for truth, as I think an
accurate lie detector would show. If reality existed, poignantly, the reality
that we experience individually, then why is it so hard to understand, and why
the waste of all these words to clarify something that seems like it would be
obvious? This point makes me doubt at times that exist at all. I suspect that
this occurs because there is an idea of “not making sense” or a hard to see
clearly idea that is placed on reality. We can both be metacognitive of
thoughts we would say are clear and thoughts we would say are not clear, and
perhaps the metacognitive label of “not clear” being said of something that is
not clear, is like a double negative that cancels itself, like the boundary of
a boundary equaling zero in the study of algebraic topology.
Technically,
since “reality” is another term that spreads its property over things, jam on
bread strutting its stuff, I also don’t think we would technically talk about
there being a reality if wanting to be accurate which is similar to an
existential quantifier of the form “E(x)”. It seems all there is is a finite
groups of things, that theoretically corresponds with some number. Wondering
what caused it, as if there some some legal requirement for the universe to
have a first thing that causes all other things, is using a why question that
is not well-formed and doesn’t makes sense, even if it is clothed in
sophisticated language as Stephen Hawkings does at the end of A Brief History
of Time. There being something that is the “cause of green” which is separate
from the entity which we would call “green”, whether that is conceived as a
cause in the sense of cause and effect or something volitional, seems wonky and
questionable to the point of not being true. A list of terms corresponding with
a group of things does not have to have either cause or volition to explain
them, they are something like a third category beyond the dividing alls imposed
by the false either/or dilemma. It seems like, that reality is simply a group
of things, that we can set in correspondence with terms, and that, since it is
not subject to time, it is in a sense something that will exist “forever”, when
that idea is qualified.
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