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Universe as Object


Eiuol

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To get this on track again, I'll address two points that seemed to get at the meat of my essay.

 

On 11/18/2016 at 0:28 PM, MisterSwig said:

Relational

Again, you leave out mental existence, and describe only the spatial and chronological relationships between physical objects.

This failure to integrate mental existence with the theory of compositionality might exemplify a more fundamental failure to integrate mental existence (consciousness) with the conception of object by mentally distinguishing it from entity during the early stages of conceptual development.

Relationships pertaining to consciousness and mental existents don't contribute to objecthood because those relationships are already understood to be created by the mind. We already notice as self-evident that consciousness is not primary. Furthermore, I'm aiming at identifying what exists apart from one's awareness. Introspection shows that there is an identity to who we are as thinkers, but looking "deeper" into that doesn't alter that this is a feature of an entity all the way inside. 

Keep in mind these ideas depend on at least already thinking Rand is right about the axioms, and her notions of what concepts are as distinguished from entities. This so-called failure to integrate is unrelated - the concept existent already does that job, and existence itself includes all existents. I'm writing about -concretes- (hence the title saying "universe", not "existence").

On 11/18/2016 at 0:28 PM, MisterSwig said:

Emergence

You present time as an emergent quality of the universe. But time is a quality of objects in motion, not the universe. Time is a measurement of motion, which would not be a unique trait for a supercomposition, since even molecules move.

Time is not a unique attribute, but its application to ALL objects is emergent. There's a sense of time relating all objects in motion. By relating all these objects together, we attain a unified universal time that is unique to the the whole of reality. But even with times relative to two molecules, time is emergent. It exists only when there is a systematic relationship. On the other hand, I am not aware of notions of time that can apply to singular objects. If there is no possible type of time like that, I'd argue that time being measurable is thanks to an emergent property that "enables" time (that time is only real as far as being part of a total system). No "universe as object" would mean there are gaps in reality where causality and time does not exist.

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On 7/1/2016 at 6:02 PM, Eiuol said:

I’d be saying there are an unknown and ungraspable set of objects in reality[6]. If the set of all objects in reality include these “invisible” objects, then all the criteria for an object to fit into the set of all objects are unknown. 

Existence is primary.  If those "invisible" unknown and ungraspable objects exist then that is the only criterion necessary for them to also to be included in a "set of all objects".   Setting up a contrived epistemological problem as if it were a metaphysical paradox is putting Consciousness as the primary.

On 7/1/2016 at 6:02 PM, Eiuol said:

Imagine the set of all known fruits, then also yet-to-be-discovered fruits. Both sets are graspable, the criteria for qualifying as a fruit can be understood differently in the future, perhaps leading me to recategorize. But if there are a set of extra-dimensional fruits that are unknowable and ungraspable because of the limits to perception, then the set of all fruits would lack any definable criteria. Apples qualify, as do bananas, but I would never know about gooblegorks. If I will never know of gooblegorks, nor why they qualify as fruits, likewise, I won’t know why apples or bananas qualify. So, the entire category of fruit becomes arbitrary or merely nominal - maya. There would be no basis to say what fruits are or are not besides a subjective impression. The same form of reasoning would apply to “invisible” objects.

The only resolution to the quandry you posit here is to have the omniscience of God, who can have no perceptual limits or any kind of limits.  If the only solution is impossible then the problem is ill-posed.   Specifically, there is a common understanding of the definition of the word fruit which delimits the membership of that conceptual category.  Whether a new, exotic or unknown object ought or ought-not be referred to as a fruit is strictly a matter of us earthbound rational animals to sort out amongst each other, there is no third party or ultimate authority apart from us to decree what is or is not a fruit.  Gooblegorks may be categorized as fruits or they may not be, but it is a moot point until someone discovers gooblegorks in the first place.  Conceptual categories are human constructs made for the benefit of humans, they are not given as Kantian or Platonic absolutes.  

If this is a problem for you, then the philosophic "problem of the beard" (that conceptual categories do not necessarily have hard boundaries) should be looming in your mind as a problem as well for the exact same reason, that what is or is not a beard is merely a subjective impression, all conceptual thought is therefore arbitrary, all is bullshit  (bullshit being my subjective translation of 'maya' into colloquial English).

 

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9 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

That was part of my response to MisterSwig.

I was aware of that.

9 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Do you have a heart and soul Ilya, are you a Mystic?

Indeed so, but you may not understand that. After all, non-mystics conflate soul and mind, emotion and thought, and thus contradict themselves. Contradiction, however, only exists in mind-centeredness. It can never exist in the soul, which is why the only non-contradictory way of gaining information from reality, from things-in-themselves, is through the soul, thus all realists are also mystics. I haven't found a single realist who wasn't also a mystic, and I have 63 of them already categorized. The understanding that genuine integrators are realists/mystics (that's the nature of integration) is my breakthrough, going far beyond Peikoff's DIM rationalizations of one and many.

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8 hours ago, Eiuol said:

This so-called failure to integrate is unrelated - the concept existent already does that job, and existence itself includes all existents. I'm writing about -concretes- (hence the title saying "universe", not "existence").

Yes, and the points I am trying to make is that integration is not automatic, regardless of what concepts who made or what concepts Rand misintegrated, and that you conflate universe and existence whenever you conflate object with context, even while thinking of the universe as an object afterwards, thus referring to an actually existing object (universe) incorrectly. Actually, perhaps universe should be thought as only a context, Cosmos of L14. I don't know what I was thinking earlier by going along with all this universe-as-object deal. This also explains the quandary MS had with the boundaries of the universe. He was right: as a context, universe (I better call this Cosmos, as that's how I integrated the concept)... so Cosmos has no strict boundaries like objects do. To say it has strictly delineated boundaries, which of course you don't, is to ignore the kind of objects within Cosmos that indeed have those boundaries, like The Great Attractor, for example.

On the other hand, there are also two problems with your integration of the concept universe: first, you ignore the string theory integration of physics, which is purely evidence-based (in contrast to other theories, like Lisi's 'exceptionally simple' one and inflation), and second, because of the Direction of your consciousness, you cannot integrate the concept universe properly, that is, from the bottom-up, and especially also because it's a context and not an object. Any top-down view on the universe is automatically misintegrative, and a reduction of it is disintegrative. These two problems do not allow you to understand the universe as anything other than a context [maybe?], even though you apply your perceptual ontology on its level. So I recommend you first to integrate a concept that is related to 'context.'

Thinking some more on this, the whole discussion of universe as object or as context really is a waste of time because it all depends on the kind of knowledge we have of it, and we have too little to say with absolute accuracy what that kind of 'supercomposition' is other than in vague conceptual terms.

8 hours ago, Eiuol said:

On the other hand, I am not aware of notions of time that can apply to singular objects.

A photon, which is a point of spacetime of absolute velocity. But it's obviously a special object, as it is a quantum, which cannot be destroyed. Speed of light, by the way, is known as the speed of causality throughout the universe because on the most fundamental level all events happen, and also caused, with this speed.

3 hours ago, Grames said:

Kantian or Platonic absolutes

I know this doesn't address the discussion, but still: I hate whenever someone conflates Kantian and Platonic absolutes. It drives me nuts, a little bit. It's like conflating mind (L7) and metacosmos (L15). The difference of scale is too extreme for a normal being to process it properly. It's like starting from rest and jumping to lightspeed.

3 hours ago, Grames said:

bullshit being my subjective translation of 'maya' into colloquial English

I like this translation. Yet it only applies from within the fields of ontology and epistemology, but not metaphysics. But then you may call everything I wrote bullshit. By that, I would say you have stretched your category 'bullshit' beyond subjective and understandable boundaries.

Edited by Ilya Startsev
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16 hours ago, Grames said:

Setting up a contrived epistemological problem as if it were a metaphysical paradox is putting Consciousness as the primary.

I'm not sure you noticed exactly the problem I'm trying to solve.

I phrased it this way: As characterized, perceptual ontology is immediately vulnerable to subjectivity in metaphysics.

I point out the implications to epistemology, true, and ask how one would -know- what an object is. But the bigger issue is what in fact exists as an object regardless of perspective. If I simply say "some objects are ungraspable" then I am forcing the problem into questions of epistemology and taking for granted that I rejected the law of identity. But we already know anything metaphysically real is graspable in some way - so all I'd need to do is define 'object' in a way that still works with identity. Yes, the beard problem is quite similar. The difference is that I'm asking why a beard isn't an object but a molecule is. I'm not asking about a conceptual category.   

16 hours ago, Grames said:

The only resolution to the quandry you posit here is to have the omniscience of God, who can have no perceptual limits or any kind of limits.  If the only solution is impossible then the problem is ill-posed.

It's not the only solution. I mean, the final words in the paper are a possible and rational solution. We know -this- solution ("invisible and ungraspable objects") is impossible because it requires a God or some totality that goes beyond human comprehension. It's part of my writing style to offer bad solutions first because it frames why it matters that I provide any answers.

Edited by Eiuol
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