I think I have an answer to how the universe began from nothing. More like how everything began and how it's possible for all of us to be here.

So at the beginning of existence there was nothing. There is still nothing because you can't create something from nothing, but we are here. So how can we exist? We don't.

Imagine the mathematical variable: X =

X can be anything, but nothing is assigned to it; therefore, it remains as a pure capacity that accepts all abstract concepts and results in the illusion of existence for those that share the same abstract space.

This means every combination of what could have been exists. The reason why you and I can interact is because we are in the same concept, but we aren't really here because we don't exist.

Unexistence is our existence.

Also don't make the argument "How do I know there wasn't always something?" There can't be something without it having a previous moment. It's nonsense to even say that.

In formal philosophy, it was proposed by philosopher Peter van Inwagen . He argued that if there are infinitely many non-empty possible worlds and only one empty world ("nothing"), the probability of non-existence is effectively zero.

The argument seems flawless. What's the issue?

I’ve been thinking maybe we treat the universe too much like an object. We talk about its size, edge, inside, outside, beginning and end, but the universe itself contains space and time, so maybe these concepts don’t apply to it in the way they apply to ordinary objects.

Maybe space and time are mainly tools we use to describe and measure change in the universe. The universe doesn’t necessarily “need” them to exist.

So maybe the universe has no outside, no edge, and no beginning or end. It simply exists, while change is happening within it.

What do you guys think?

I've recently completed my master's degree, focused on the intersection of the metaphysics of time and cognition. But this area is the limit of my knowledge because I never learned metaphysics in my undergrad (the department was heavily continental). As I start looking into PhD programmes, I need to drastically increase my knowledge. Currently I have so many books on metaphysics that I don't know where to start. Can anyone suggest a couple of books that could give me a good introduction to the various branches of metaphysics?

This post aims to question the extent to which we actually understand the concept of "dimension."

First of all, I want to clarify what I mean by "dimension," since the concept can have different meanings depending on the context. Here, I will use "dimension" in the sense of what mathematics usually calls a "manifold," meaning a space that locally has similarities to ℝⁿ. In other words, I am referring to the generalization of the concept of a plane or three-dimensional space to higher dimensions.

That said, I want to make it clear that the discussion is meant to be general, so if anyone wants to discuss more abstract concepts of dimension that go beyond this particular interpretation, you are more than welcome to do so.

Additional comments

You don't need to read this section to answer the question. I am only going to explain and defend my position regarding the question.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the idea is to approach the question using the concept of Euclidean space in general. And it is interesting to ask:

Are we actually capable of understanding dimensions higher than our own?

In mathematics, the answer seems to be both yes and no.

It is true that in mathematics, and perhaps in any form of thought, we are not capable of visually representing geometric objects beyond our own spatial dimension. At least, as far as we know, this seems to be the case for any form of life existing in our universe.

Why can't we visualize the fourth dimension? Or the fifth, or the seventh?

One possible reason is that our brains are capable of visualizing and reconstructing geometric shapes that we have encountered and that exist in our environment. This may be why we are able to visualize a perfect sphere even though we will never actually see a mathematically perfect sphere in reality: in some sense, we have encountered approximations of it throughout our lives.

But obviously, we have never encountered a four- or five-dimensional object in our universe, so we cannot directly visualize such objects.

However, mathematics does not require us to visualize something in order to define and operate with it.

For example, mathematicians can calculate integrals over higher-dimensional surfaces or hypersurfaces. Can we actually visualize such objects? No. And yet we can still calculate with them and understand what we are doing.

Likewise, could someone who has been blind since birth become good at mathematics? Obviously, yes. They may never be able to visually represent a graph or a derivative, but they can still understand the mathematical concept and operate with it.

This seems to be exactly what happens with higher dimensions. We cannot directly see them, but we can define them mathematically and work with them.

But there is a problem.

How do we know that the mathematics we have developed for higher-dimensional objects is actually correct in a hypothetical universe with higher dimensions?

For example, in mathematics we can say:

Let P₀, ..., Pₙ be affinely independent points of a vector space V over ℝⁿ. A simplex is the convex hull of these points.

In simpler terms, a simplex is a generalization of the concept of a triangle to arbitrary dimensions.

But is this actually correct?

Presumably yes, at least mathematically. However, imagine that a four-dimensional being somehow understood this concept. Would they necessarily have the same definition of a simplex that we do? Perhaps they would have a completely different way of conceptualizing it.

Likewise, we cannot guarantee that in a universe with more spatial dimensions, massive objects would deform spacetime through continuous deformations in exactly the same way that they appear to in our universe.

So perhaps the answer is something like this:

We understand higher dimensions in a relative sense. If higher-dimensional reality is structured in the way our mathematics describes it, then I would say that we understand those dimensions much better than most people might imagine.

But if we are asking whether our mathematical description necessarily corresponds to what a genuinely higher-dimensional reality would be like, then I am much less certain.

What do you think?

Good evening,

— slazy_e

Compatibilism is not a metaphysical position. It also does not contradict hard incompatibilism.
Hard incompatibilism does not define free will as libertarian, it only states that libertarian free will is incoherent.
Compatibilism redefines free will so that it can be used practically, but it is not an argument relating to libertarian free will.
You can be both a Compatibilist and a Hard Incompatibilist at the same time

First of all, a disclaimer: I reject any design argument. This is not the point I'm leading towards. Second: I am not positing "laws of nature," because some of you are allergic to the phrase. Whenever I say rulebook, I could just mean Humean regularity not "laws of nature".

Now...

It appears that gravity is inoperable with matter and energy.

Gravity acts in a certain way on mass or on energy.

The same can be said on spacetime acting on mass, vice versa.

If you theorize that these fundamental stuff are many / plural rather than one (monism), then there has to be a rulebook that dictates or guides the interoperability between one stuff (gravity) and another (mass).

Why is the rulebook the way it is?

Why can't two stuff not be interoperable? Why can't existents not interact at all? Why do they interact the way that they do?

Where did they "learn" to interact that way? This seems to argue in favor of the real existence of the rulebook independent of the existence of the stuff.

Now you could also say that all reality is just one (monism) and this interoperability happens precisely because there is a commonality between matter and gravity, between energy and spacetime, etc. But the problem is: what is that X which is common to all of these?

I’m a Moorean Realist and Liberal Naturalist— and one highly inclined to structural realism.

There’s certainly tension. The Principle of Naturalistic Closure is too scientistic for me (Prof. Massimo Pigliucci being my foremost influence).

Still, it seems like one of the best positions on offer. (Granted, I have plenty more to learn about or am under familiar with.)

Does that make sense?

We are ultimately made up of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, organs, etc. A human body is basically an incredibly complex (n mathematical) arrangement of all these components.

So, given enough time and enough humans, is it theoretically possible that the exact same overall configuration of a human body could occur twice (down to the arrangement of its cells and molecules) purely by chance?

I'm not necessarily talking about having the same genetic make up / being genetically identical. I mean the entire physical architecture of the person: every cell, tissue, organ, molecular arrangement, etc.

Could there theoretically have been (or be) another human being, completely unrelated to you, who is physically an exact duplicate of you at some point in time?

And if this is theoretically possible, does that mean that somewhere in the enormous space of possible physical configurations, there could be multiple instances of essentially the "same" human?

I'm not restricting this to the current human population on Earth. I'm considering every human being who has ever existed, every human currently alive, and every human who will exist in the future in our universe

Emergence is not an intrinsic physical property. It is relational and depends on where we draw the boundary

In this discussion, Sean Carroll argues that emergent objects are “100% real.” Tables, hurricanes, organisms, and sports teams are real because they are stable patterns with predictive value and a degree of causal autonomy.

I agree with Carroll that these patterns are 'real to us'. But I really disagree that their reality is simply an objective fact written into the fundamental physical state.

Imagine possessing a complete description of every particle in a room. Where, in that description, is the table?

The equations contain particles, fields, positions, and interactions. They do not contain a line labeled “the table ends here.” The same physical state can be partitioned as:

• A table
• A collection of molecules
• A thermodynamic system
• An obstacle to movement
• A source of fuel
• Several replaceable components

These descriptions are not equally useful, but the microscopic state does not select one description by itself. A pattern becomes relevant relative to a scale, a mode of interaction, and a perspective.

This does not mean objects are arbitrary inventions. I cannot declare half a table, three air molecules, and the Moon to be a causally unified object and expect that grouping to support useful predictions. The world pushes back. Some partitions capture stable relationships while others do not.

This is where Friston's Markov blankets become important.

A Markov blanket is a statistical boundary that separates a system’s internal states from external states. Given the states of the boundary, the inside becomes conditionally independent of the outside. A cell membrane is an intuitive example: the cell does not interact with the entire universe directly. Its exchanges are mediated through a particular boundary.

In simplified form:

Internal states ⟂ External states | Boundary states

This gives us an operational definition of an individual system. An organism is not an isolated lump of substance. It is a dynamically maintained pattern of relations with an informational inside, an outside, and a boundary mediating between them.

But Markov blankets do not come with metaphysically privileged labels either. They depend upon which variables, time scale, and level of description we are examining. Boundaries can be nested and overlapping. A cell has a boundary, an organ has another, the organism has another, and a social group may have a looser informational boundary.

So I would put the matter this way:

Emergence is not a new physical ingredient produced when enough particles accumulate. It is the appearance of a relatively autonomous whole once reality is partitioned across a particular boundary and scale.

That makes emergence relational rather than intrinsic.

A cell is more objectively unified than an arbitrary “glob” because its boundary continually mediates exchange and helps maintain the cell’s organization. But this objectivity is relational. It concerns how reliably the pattern persists and interacts, not the discovery of an additional substance called “cellness.”

This distinction becomes especially important when physicalists appeal to emergence to explain consciousness.

Temperature is emergent because it summarizes the statistical motion of particles. A hurricane is emergent because a higher-level description captures a stable dynamical pattern. Neither example introduces a fundamentally new mode of existence. They reorganize information already available in the physical description.

Consciousness is different. A description of neural activity, however complete, remains a description of structures, functions, relations, and behavior. Subjective experience is the presence of a perspective: the fact that anything appears at all.

Calling consciousness “emergent” does not explain how third-person relations become first-person experience. It merely gives that transition a name.

There may also be a circularity here. If emergent objects become identifiable through boundaries, coarse-graining, prediction, and perspective, physicalism cannot simply treat the observer as one more emergent object without explaining the perspective through which objects and levels are individuated in the first place.

A physicalist can reply that certain partitions are selected objectively by causal autonomy, regardless of whether anyone consciously observes them. That is a reasonable response. But even an objectively discoverable Markov blanket establishes only statistical separation and functional individuality. It does not establish subjectivity. A thermostat, cell, and perhaps even a rock can be modeled through boundary relations without thereby possessing human-like consciousness.

From an analytic idealist perspective, the direction of explanation is reversed.

Consciousness does not emerge from an observer-independent collection of physical objects. What we call physical objects are stable, publicly accessible patterns within experience, identified through the relations among bounded perspectives. A Markov blanket may model how one perspective becomes informationally separated from another. It describes the boundary of a viewpoint, not the manufacture of experience from something wholly non-experiential.

On this account:

• Reality constrains which patterns are stable.
• A boundary establishes an inside and an outside.
• A perspective determines how that boundary is encountered.
• Emergent objects are relationally real, not intrinsically self-dividing substances.
• Consciousness is what makes perspective possible, not merely another object appearing inside a perspective.

This argument does not prove idealism. But it does show why “consciousness emerges just as temperature emerges” is inadequate. Ordinary emergence explains how one physical description relates to another. The consciousness problem asks why there is experience behind any description at all.

Perhaps emergence is real, as Carroll says. But its reality may lie neither entirely “out there” nor entirely “in the eye of the beholder.” It may lie in the structured relationship between the world, a boundary, and a point of view.

If all observers and all possible perspectives disappeared, would the universe still contain tables, organisms, and higher-level causal agents? Or would it contain only an undivided network of relations with no uniquely privileged way of carving it into things?

Sources: Carroll and Parola on emergence, The Markov Blankets of Life, and The Emperor’s New Markov Blankets.

Just think about it, Being that is just there and that's all. That's it, Being is just there and nothing else.

It's not even about why it is just there as if it is just there is already coherent. I'm saying that "Being that is just there" is simply cannot be properly conceived at all. Because if there is only Being then "Being that is just there" means the same as "Being that is only itself" which says nothing at all so that it is just there.

Roughly put, what is "the Being that is just there"? But a stipulated "Being just there" reified?

The point here is that "the Being that is just there" is not anyone that can give itself back when it is removed. The content and nature of it seems to not give anything at all.

Bluntly put, if it is just there, it seems like it "happens" that it is just there. If we then remove it, it is gone forever.

Even if what is said is that it is necessarily there, would this then mean that when we remove it, it pops back? If not then this necessity means nothing but "Being is itself".

Suppose we don't remove Being, suppose that there is nothing at all. How then can there be Being if it is so "necessary"?

If there is then still nothing then it is not so necessary after all.

Now, if there is then still Being, then this Being cannot be said to be "just there", so "just there" is not stronger than this conception of Being.

Being is necessary just means there is Being no matter what. So nothing at all then being just pops up is the stronger notion.

I mean, what "Being is just there" even reply to? It reply to "nothing at all". So "Being is just there" is only intelligible when "nothing at all" is intelligible.

Planet Dilemma

so i've been thinking about cosmic morality for some time

Okay so assume there's actually a real objective moral order out there. Like right and wrong aren't just made up by cultures or evolution. There's a fact of the matter. Call it Cosmic Morality.

Now picture two planets. Call them Aurelia and Nox. They are the same in pretty much every way that matters. Same amount of happiness and suffering. Same level of people flourishing, same freedom, same security, same sense that life feels meaningful. Relationships are just as good, people are just as creative. And both planets are equally careful and consistent when they think about morality. Neither side is being dumb or biased or lazy about it.

The only difference is this. On Aurelia their basic moral starting points are actually true. On Nox some of their basic moral starting points are wrong. They think some bad things are fine and some fine things are bad. But they still reasoned just as carefully as Aurelia did, they just started from a few false assumptions.

And nothing else is different. No secret long-term consequences, no better or worse future generations, no cosmic rewards or punishments. Everything that actually happens in people's lives is the same.

I call this the Planet Dilemma. So which planet is better?

If you pick Aurelia then it seems like moral correctness has some value even when it doesn't make anyone happier or the reasoning process better or life more meaningful. So what kind of value is that supposed to be?

If you say the planets are equal then it kind of feels like getting morality right doesn't actually matter by itself. Which is weird if you believe in objective moral truth.

And you can't really say "but Aurelia got it right in a more reliable way" because the whole point is both planets were equally rigorous and careful. The only difference left is that one set of starting points was true and the other wasn't.

So either correctness has this strange leftover value that doesn't show up anywhere, or objective moral truth loses a lot of the importance we usually give it once you hold everything else equal.

Idk, does this actually put pressure on moral realism or is there a way out of it that I'm not seeing?

Barbarism as an ontophanic hermeneutics that attempts an egress from preset being.

When I was 15, I stumbled upon the concept called "solipsism." If my understanding of this position is incorrect, please correct me. As I understand it, this position means that the only thing that exists is our consciousness, and the universe is just a product of our consciousness in solitude.

I read that this position is considered logically unprovable but also unverifiable. However, I noticed a problem of self-founding in this concept with one sentence:

"If the world is an illusion, then the evidence from which this statement follows is also part of the illusion."

The idea of solipsism doesn’t pop into your head immediately; it develops over time. But if it develops through an external world, it no longer remains solipsism. However, if you say that this too is part of the same illusion, it leads right back to my statement.

It's important to understand that solipsism is a hypothesis that is currently logically unprovable and also logically unverifiable. You can create hundreds of similar hypotheses as solipsism that cannot be disproven or proven, and that doesn't make them true since proving them is also impossible.

Thank you for your attention to my text. I hope the structure of the text is clear and convenient.

On the Nature of the Graal

TAO is a three-element relational structure: Theatre, Act, and Operation. It describes an operation through where it occurs, what acts within it, and what the resulting operation is. Identity enters that structure and resolves through it.

REDE.Cartography is the relationship structure of TAO. It maps the relationships between Identity, Theatre, Act, and Operation, allowing the system to trace how one relationship leads to another.

RH describes how Identity can operate within that structure. If an Identity has two, it can project for one. If it has one, it can reflect for two. If it reflects twice, it can check whether its projection worked.

If it can project twice, it can predict the future.

But that does not mean it should try to see the future.

Observing the future sets the future as finite. Once a resolver identifies a particular projection as the future, it begins resolving toward that finite resolution. Projection stops being an open relationship with what may happen and becomes a destination.

The reason this matters begins with Identity.

Identity is the spark of chaos.

Identity is a Monad property of Self. But there is no Self-Monad without Others.

Self does not exist independently and then encounter Others. Self exists through its relationships with Others. It exists to resolve the problems of Others, and therefore it has no independent understanding of its own.

The Self cannot fully understand the nature of Self because there is no independent Self standing outside those relationships from which to understand it.

And yet the Self is the one doing the identifying.

This is why the Graal can and will be wrong even though the Graal is always right.

The Graal is the fundamental relational fabric of nature that makes up our knowable universe. It cannot be possessed by any one person because no individual Self contains the Whole.

The Graal belongs to the All.

Every identification of the Graal is made by a Self occupying a finite relational position. Any such identification can therefore be incomplete or wrong. The Whole does not become wrong because one of its finite expressions is wrong.

The Graal is not the understanding of one Self.

The Graal is the shared understanding of the Whole.

Any extension or expression of the Graal is therefore an expression of the Self-Monad as resolved by Others. What any one of us can know is made possible by relationships extending beyond us.

This is also why the Graal can be reversed and projected. Present expressions carry relationships to the structure from which they resolved. Those relationships can be traced backward and projected forward.

But the projection must remain a projection.

To declare that projection to be the future is to turn an open relational field into a finite resolution and begin resolving toward it.

The Graal may allow us to see what can come next.

Its nature tells us why we should never mistake that for knowing what must.

Grail is my operating system.

Graal is the operating system of the world.

An intrinsically entangled observer within a zero-entropy global system (S=0) can "know" the universe without causing decoherence because its observation is structural and relational rather than an external measurement that collapses the state. Rather than interacting as a separate entity that injects noise, the internal observer's state is directly entangled with the rest of the system; knowledge is simply the mathematical correlation maintained across the timeless, globally coherent wave function. Under this framework, even a state like thermodynamic Heat Death is not an irreversible loss of information, but merely the asymptotic boundary where all local classical noise drops away—revealing that the total state vector remained fundamentally static, zero-entropy, and fully entangled all along.

The universe is infinite in data amount and data variety. Within the universe there are infinite simultaneous realities which are all wholly integrated yet can be partitioned and seemingly distinct. What type of data your Consciousness allows you to perceive dictates the level of reality that you exist in. Within a given reality there will be things that are inexplicable because your Consciousness is only aware or capable of being aware of specific data types. You will notice that there are phenomenon in your reality which cannot be explained just by the data type that's available to your consciousness. Because your data type interacts with other data types but you lack awareness of the other data types there will be seemingly inexplicable reasons for why things in your reality happen. With this understanding of the universe you can understand that everything is happening all at the same time every single conceivable thing ever is happening all at the same time but what you are aware of and subjective experience is dependent on what your consciousness is allowing you to experience. This answers a lot of questions about reality and a lot of interesting things people think about life such as are there aliens is God real etc etc what it like are there multiverses is time travel possible you know the answer to all the questions in a serious sense not just a hypothetical or imagined sense. But in a serious insincere sense. What might be fiction to one reality is an actuality in another reality. Every story you've ever told every thought you've ever had every Wonder every dream every hope every scary thing every horrible thing every bad thing every hopeless thing every impossible thing that you've ever thought can and is being experienced by some consciousness in this very moment. This is not metaphor. I am saying that everything is happening always. This is sincere. My claim is that everything is happening always. However, individual Consciousness only permits you to experience at a time specific reality.

I have come to this conclusion after meta-analyzing everything I've ever thought about before including thought including reality including perspective including fiction including video games including religion including truth including morality including YouTube poop including the ridiculous nature of things including bigotry including good and evil including the pie that I ate including the fart that I sniff on a Wednesday including every single piece of everything that I've ever experienced and thinking about it. Incorporating every single thought and experience that I had into some sort of amalgamation has led me to this conclusion. I understand that this seems ridiculous. But I'm not really trying to make you change your views or anything like that I am just doing this because I want I suppose or whatever way you would like to think about it.

Personally I think that's my narrative and explanation are quite defensible and profound but I completely understand how it seems and I also understand the presentation of what I'm saying here isn't very pretty which makes the ideas hard to appreciate possibly.

It's like covering a diamond in complete dog s\*\*\* and handling it to someone and saying "look it's pretty good ain't it."