A Metaphysical Framework Theory

[PeteJ]

Afternoon all,

Here is my framework theory for a TOE.

http://philpapers.org/rec/JONFMT

I argue for four propositions.

1. The universe is reasonable
2. All positive metaphyscal positions are logically indefensible
3. A neutral metaphyscial posotion is logically defensible
4. Either the universe is a unity (as opposed to 'one'), or it is paradoxical (there are true contradictions)

The first is an axiom, the second a fact, the third a reasoned proposal (I would call it a fact), and the fourth a logical conclusion.

It is an attempt to prove what Kant and Hegel proposed, and to extend the logical arguments of Bradley and Nagarjuna. It is the proposal that the perennial philosophy is true.

So far no serious objections, but I hope there'll be some here.

It is not a TOE, but it may be a secure foundation on which to build one, and it would be capable of providing a framework within which to systematize and relate all our sub-theories in physics and philosophy into a TOE. Nothing about the fundamental forces I'm afraid, it deals mostly with what comes before and after physics. But it implies that they should be capable or being united.

Sorry it's so long. I was trying to get my own thoughts in order, not necessarily to be brief.

It has been refereed by an academic committee and the editors at philpapers, so it should at least be rigorous.

Part II is in the planning stage, but I'm after some wider feedback before continuing.

I'm happy to discuss these four propositions in isolation from the essay if you don't want to read it, or prior to reading it.

Looking forward to your comments and objections.

Thanks
PeteJ

[austintorn@aol.com]

I would agree to all of it, having previously read the entire paper, but perhaps for the Buddhist conclusion that all is an unreal illusion, an extreme position, but of course they could be referring to and further interpreting the 'emptiness' that somehow fills itself with goings-on, especially because they honorably fulfill the task of what goes on as the necessary thing to do. They would pick up litter not because someone might be watching but because it serves the task, even of the so-called 'unreal', which then at least must mean something.

[austintorn@aol.com]

So, there is, must be, a neutral unity of extreme positions, given that the universe must be reasonable, as even what is thought to be unreasonable must still have reason, even if it is something weird to us as 'reason' like a basis of a law of no laws or random (which still needs some regulation to keep it random).

We have then have that there is no pure materialism, nor no pure world of ideals, etc., but some mixture, or both at the same time.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Consciousness floating around, as like a ‘soul’ alone would have nothing to witness, a kind of unperceptive immortality, so it requires the content of experience, but experience without consciousness would just be as a zombie, it going nowhere really. Perhaps the capability for consciousness is a fundamental thing, like mass is, but it certainly requires a brain and a brain process.

Things moving and happening can grant time, but the overall essence behind this could be rather timeless at the level of Totality where nothing really changes overall.

Existence has no source that is of other existence, yet non-existence—a lack of anything—wouldn’t seem to be able to go anywhere.

A neutral unity has become necessary to account for what is, the opposites somehow living in peace with each other, each there because of the other.

[austintorn@aol.com]

More examples…

Some alcoholic drinking can be tempered by knowing its effect via science, but internal feelings may overwhelm the information, which may be akin to those going only by internal feelings and sensations of 'God' as a metaphysical position without being informed by the science externals of the neurology beneath feelings and sensations. A unity of internals/externals beckons as the middle way.

In a general way, the left side of the brain operates in serial mostly concerning details, the right side in parallel mostly realizing the whole without a focus on the detail. A unity forms, a balance of the yin and yang ever revolving into a more rounded life. As we are the universe come to life, it could be that the two views are mirrored therein as well.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Finally, the best case for a philosophy of existence is to have it actually correspond to the observation of it in actual existence… for example:

Something and/or Nothing

Nothing forever cannot be, obviously. Something forever has no source, for it was never made, so this cannot be; yet, there is something, and it has certain properties, so, something is made of nothing, which can only be distributed as ‘sum-things’; so, we look for a symmetric balance, and there it is: pairs, opposite in charge and matter state. There is both something and nothing at the same time. That is the unity and the TOE. There is no ‘One’.

We can conceive of ‘nothing’ as the lack of anything, but we know this is not the case since there is something, and so a lack of anything was not possible. This information indicates that there has to be something, that there must be something, but we don’t yet know exactly why.
Yet if the basic something(s) had been around forever, they never would have been made, there both being no source and no no time or place for the creation, yet something has definition and properties without any defining point; so, the something had to be created at some point for some reason, and it can’t be eternal as non makable and unbreakable. Nor is the something completely full, totally filling up all possible space to absolute solidity, as then we would be packed in like sardines.

This is all philosophy so far, but for the known of something, and we further philosophize that since things can’t forever be made of lessor things since not only would this cascade never end but also have no definition point for the things that nothing is the only possible source.
None of this would seem to go anywhere by itself but for the fortunate correspondence of observation that there is a curious zero balance of symmetry of the basics, this being that pairs of substance pop in an out of existence that have opposite polarity of charge and matter state, such as an electron(-) and a positron(+), as well as that the negative potential energy of gravity matches the positive kinetic energy of substance. There is also the symmetry of there being only two stable matter particles, these being charged, the electron(-) and the proton(+), and their antiparticles, with only one stable neutral energy ‘particle’, the photon, which seems to have both a positive and negative lobe.

So, the positive metaphysical position of stuff forever fails, it being absurd for having no source, while the position of a total lack of anything also fails, it being absurd since there is and must be something.

Evidently, nothing forever and something forever are true and always present at the same time, which is a kind of neutral metaphysical position, for something always becomes of nothing, the something ever happening, yet these ‘sum-things’ ever summing to nothing overall. Existence has to be made of partial nonexistence in balance.

Electrons, beings, and Beings are somethings, a range of the simple to the more complex, but none of them can be fundamental and eternal. What is eternal and boundless would be the ever in-between of completely full or totally empty—a finite realm ever jitter-bugging with ‘sum-things’, and this Totality fits the bill of being the prime mover, requiring nothing but itself, as well as being eternal in duration and boundless in extent.

There can be no stable uncharged (neutral) matter particle with no antiparticle in free space (neutrons decay) because there would be no way to nullify the existence of the substance in the overview by the halves of polarity, and there can be no charged energy particle with a different antiparticle in free space because that would then have to be substance and because energy already embodies Totality at large rather than half of it.

Things are the way they are since there is no other way for them to be.

Even if one retreats to “can’t know”, just in case, there is still the freedom to be (within our form) because “can’t know”.


(Please discuss all, not just saying "yes", "no", "refutable", or "irrefutable" without any rigor.)

[austintorn@aol.com]

A kind of "wrap up"…

THE SOLIDARITY OF THE CONCORDANCE The blend of the balanced coalition grows upon itself, striving for the dynamic-balance—of light and dark, yin and yang, and wrong and right. Reality’s not found in separate actions, but in related events blended in twilight.

The concept of classicism accentuates order and clarity of thought, simplicity, restraint, balance, dignity, and a mistrust of emotion and excess; however, since it relies on imitation and the acceptance of objective standards, it may lack spontaneity, and degenerate into excessive traditionalism and empty formalism.

Romanticism embraces an exaltation of the feelings, an individualism, with new modes of imagination, of freedom of form, spontaneity, self-expression, and subjectivity. It began, at least in art, music, and literature, as a revolt against 18th century doctrines of restraint, forms and rules, decorum, stagnation, and blind tradition.

However, romanticism and classicism are now taken as more general terms. Some exemplars of their contrast are: passion as opposed to reason; the whole against the details; the yin facing the yang; the right vs. the left side of the brain, “Don’t confuse me with emotion” or “don’t confuse me with facts”; or the sails confronting the rudder of the soul.

This epitome may become a battlefield, or it may grace a smooth sailing ship. How easy they are not transformed, these apparently opposing forces that may wage war upon the other, but, how tremendous they can be in a bond of confederacy. Pure reason, ruling all alone, is a force confining and stale; while passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own end. Poetry is an ideal of the unison: the right side of the brain provides the inspiration; the left side devises the rhyme.

An utter, absolute classicist or romanticist is an extremist! S/he honors one worthy guest in the house above the other, and so loses the love and faith of both. Witness the average classicist at IBM, one who knows little of the humanities, one who ever works through lunch, never having the time to hear of life, making every decision by the book but none from the heart. Or the total romanticist: one who can’t even hold a job, even taking drugs, and losing all control.

The writing of this page—this analysis—is rather a classicist undertaking. But, I do not live by the unbending way and therefore my songbird is never imprisoned within. Perhaps, it chooses to be here, classically, or perhaps it will, at any time of day, burst forth and enjoy a total feeling. Nor does a long wild night of lovemaking mean that you’ve gone bonkers. Life is full of spikes of valleys and mountains—it is only when one can’t merge the two or at least make jumps between that one may need some reflection.

How can there be any sort of resolution of a dichotomy in which one side expresses itself so logically and the other in emotions and images? Well, if either your sails or rudder be broken, you will soon be dead in the water... Therefore, the discord and rivalry of one’s elements must become rhythm and all sweet melody! It’s not the same for everyone, but the knowledge of the ‘contrast’ itself is the first step… Therefore, let your blended soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing and fly about, letting it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live and survive through its daily death and resurrection, but in effect, ever arising from its own ashes.

Now, no one can hardly ever achieve the ultimate and perfect balance between classicism and romanticism, but for the rare times when one is totally in the ‘zone’, and indeed, this balancing attempt itself smacks of classicism! And so we all have leanings—and that’s what I mean when I say my tilt is somewhat toward romanticism. Emotion, slightly favored, can rule, sometimes, but every so often I do check in with logic and analytical reason.

Thereby, I enjoy the world, its existence preceding its essence in importance, mainly, because, like many of you, I am much impressed by it wonders… Without perception’s deeper depiction, one finds little that excites—not noticing much, ever in a hurry, and seldom having the time…

Two other poor relatives of classicism and romanticism are substance and surface glory. The romanticist in me likes the veneer of the shiny red car or motorcycle, but the classicist in me would like to know that the vehicle operates well, and even be able to take it much apart, for that is the very substance. When I maintain my car or cycle well, shine it up, and then speed off into the country sunshine with the wind on my face, then I have the best of both worlds!

Now, I do still like to tug at the hem of the garment in which life’s mysterious dualities are clothed. As ever as in all good marriages, “The oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow”.

People involved in the arts may like to listen to music while they work in order to deactivate the left side of the brain by giving it something innocuous to focus on. Personally, I often dream up many ideas while listening to the music that moves me deeply, for then the imaginative power of the brain’s right hemisphere is free and inspired to soar unbounded.

Yes, I do lean toward romanticism... Perhaps it is my nature nurtured, or perhaps I feel a need to counteract the overabundance of classicism in the world, or perhaps because in romanticism there is grandeur, while in classicism there is but logic and endless analytical thought. But, even with these leanings, the good romanticists never forgets that it is classicism that pays the bills that authorizes the indulgences, and so I worked in computers; however, the programming of them turned out to be an art.

I have some hope, that, in any totally classical person, no matter how stern or dull s/he be, that one day, somehow, somewhere, there will come some small measure of joy, but, then, an ever-luring triumph of jubilation. Yes, the desire to be orderly and factual is a part of the human species, but there are other yearnings in every person, the desire to be imaginative and unrestrained in expressing personal emotions, warmly and freely flowing, and to take in art, music, literature, as well as escalate the way one lives a life from an illuminating flame fed from the self, a source of lucid experience that can usher wisdom and fervency, as the means to a more rounded truth.

These may be some of romanticism’s aspects: sentiment, celebration of nature, interest in the past, a new emphasis on feeling and the senses, and even actually enjoying melancholy and sadness in their place. Thence comes love of freedom, mysteries, even fascinating figures and heroes, the allegorical, a delight in whimsy, the improbable, and the ‘impossible’, of legend, folklore, and mythology, yet not fooled by them, and an awe before the immensity of what is—the Earth as a friend and the sky as a warm blanket, and certainly the uniqueness of the self; but one must be able to tell fantasy from reality, too.

The curious blend never lets one down, ever keeping one centered, but ranging. So, extroversion entertains, at large, while love’s introversion is great, one-on-one. Intuition and sensing can sustain each the other in a magnificent fusion. Thinking and feeling combined are of an unbeatable synergy, of a being coalesced and intermixed. Sensing the general direction but not exactly knowing one’s next move is of a spontaneous higher ‘order’.

Now looms the classical planning of a magnificently grand adventure, whether triumphant or of glorious failure, always of the superb and the sublime. Merge these ingredients, until smooth, this loving mixture, mingling and combining, it soon melding into the ‘zone’, well integrated, stirred, whisked, and folded, in and out, the commingling that leads to the harmony of amalgamation’s union, the marriage and the synthesis, the very admixture of the concoction of life’s ever-during brew.

The parts all sum to the whole flow, so, life must be more like a mosaic done than some focused laser tunnel of sun. Since few lengthy pleasures are lent to us, we must build a stained-glass window of small ones. Oh, thou ‘soul’, dare to live near the edge; brave the walk of the line, balancing fun there between adventure and misfortune—for the greatest blunder in life is to repeatedly fear that you might make one.

Hail! Lord Byron’s golden mean extends: let us have wine, lovers, song, and laughter—water, chastity, prayer the day after. Such we’ll alternate the rest of our days—so, on the average, we’ll make hereafter!

Wholeness arrives by mixing the suspension: classicists drone toward dull perfection, romanticists drown in feeling’s affection; worse, others alternate between extremes—it’s not this nor that, but a joined direction. Harmony then rolls along, round and round: each holding within it the seed of the other—yin reaches climax, then retreats in yang’s favor, a cyclic movement of rotational symmetry: rounded life is the blend of yin/Yang together. The perfect balance may still call upon us: edges dissolve when opposites are balanced—time and dimensional space are transcended. Everything joins yet remains as itself, for what “is not” is as great as what “is”.

[PeteJ]

Austin - The point I make in the essay is that it is mistake to reify the distinction between something and nothing, not that they are different 'things' that need to be reconciled. Once they are reified we are stuck with a paradox. Further, there would be no phenomenon that is eternal, since what is 'Absolute' would not be 'in' time. (Like some drummers I know). Nor would the the Absolute be boundless in extent, since it would have no size. I don't think youre being radical enough. You have to abandon these distinctions. I know you agree with this in a theoretical sense, but you don't actually do it.

Plotinus likens the universe to a hypersphere. What matters ultimately is the focal point, while time and space would be properties of the surface.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Austin - The point I make in the essay is that it is mistake to reify the distinction between something and nothing, not that they are different 'things' that need to be reconciled. Once they are reified we are stuck with a paradox. Further, there would be no phenomenon that is eternal, since what is 'Absolute' would not be 'in' time. (Like some drummers I know). Nor would the the Absolute be boundless in extent, since it would have no size. I don't think youre being radical enough. You have to abandon these distinctions. I know you agree with this in a theoretical sense, but you don't actually do it.

OK, but much more rigor is needed toward my responses, especially the agreement of philosophy with observation on the zero-balance that surely attends to the paradox better than anyone could have imagined.

There is a distinction between something and a lack of all something, even if neither state makes sense without the other, which tends to remove the distinction, via their unity, as even referenced by Buddhists, although they may overdo the emptiness part, reifying it too much into all.

There is indeed something external since we operate on stuff out there, even obtaining stuff to use from out there, and then making of it devices that work out there that surely relies on what we know of out there via science. This all means that we have a fine understanding of reality out there.

Some might suggest a hoax in which all is just for show, as in a dream, but that this ‘movie’ with many alternate scenes goes exactly according to what would happen if all were truly real, which is far-fetched, suggesting that the senses and the brain that evolution spent so much time on really do nothing on their own. Yet, what makes no difference is no difference, but in the mechanics of the messenger, and so the message of reality remains the same. These kinds of complex mechanics based on something beneath that still must be real, such as a matrix or a projector, are still not an ‘out’ over atoms doing the work themselves.

‘We’ are also not much of a factor in what is and has gone on, since if all of the 14 billion years were to be compressed into one year, we only appear on New Year’s Eve several minutes before midnight.

I would agree that Totality (the Absolute) would be unchanging overall and so that there would be no time at that level. It having no size or shape would be what boundless is, since no bounds.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Plotinus likens the universe to a hypersphere. What matters ultimately is the focal point, while time and space would be properties of the surface.

I can be more radical. The ‘hyper’ in ‘hypersphere’ can refer to 4D, the boundless 3D ‘surface’ of a so-called finite 4D hypersphere or hypercube (quadric, but not a cube as such), just as a 3D finite sphere has a boundless 2D surface, which is hinted of by 4D space-time or the Einstein block universe. Time and space, interlinked as space-time, would then be internal properties of the external 4D (distance^4), and, since 3D space is compositional, only the 4th dimension, having but two directions of polarity to work with, could nullify all of existence in the overview, via time being both motion (the difference of space or spaces) as well the polarity of charge, not that matter/antimatter annihilation and stuff vs. gravity cancellation doesn’t help, too.

So, the philosophy matching observation has even been extended some more. Do you want more of the astounding details? They have all been worked out. The 3 dimensions of space are explained; the speed limit of light is explained; the hypersphere/cube is derived and has much more detail; conservation laws are explained; forever systems are explained in their curious but seldom thought about properties, such as what it means for them to be their own precursors (no first anything); energy quanta for energy ‘particles’ and charge quanta for matter particles are explained; galactic recycling is explained; the non statistical universe is explained…