/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14362590]

Herein lies the annoyingly persistent logical error of those physicists (like Alexander Vilenkin, Victor Stenger, or Lawrence Krauss) who claim that physics has now discovered how the universe can have spontaneously arisen from “nothingness,” without divine assistance. It does not really matter whether the theoretical models they propose may one day prove to be correct. Without exception, what they are actually talking about is merely the formation of our universe by way of a transition from one physical state to another, one manner of existence to another, but certainly not the spontaneous arising of existence from nonexistence (which is logically impossible). They often produce perfectly delightful books on the subject, I hasten to add, considered simply as tours of the latest developments in speculative cosmology; but as interventions in philosophical debates those books are quite simply irrelevant. As a matter of purely intellectual interest, it would be wonderful some day to know whether the universe was generated out of quantum fluctuation, belongs either to an infinite “ekpyrotic” succession of universes caused by colliding branes or to a “conformally cyclic” succession of bounded aeons, is the result of inflationary quantum tunneling out of a much smaller universe, arose locally out of a multiverse in either limited constant or eternal chaotic inflation, or what have you. As a matter strictly of ontology, however, none of these theories is of any consequence, because no purely physical cosmology has any bearing whatsoever upon the question of existence (though one or two such cosmologies might point in its direction). Again, the “distance” between being and nonbeing is qualitatively infinite, and so it is immaterial here how small, simple, vacuous, or impalpably indeterminate a physical state or event is: it is still infinitely removed from nonbeing and infinitely incapable of having created itself out of nothing. That the physical reality we know is the result of other physical realities has more or less been the assumption of most human cultures throughout history; but that, unfortunately, casts no light whatsoever on why it is that physical reality, being intrinsically contingent, should exist at all.

[Anonymous No.14362592]

To be clear here: not only has physics not yet arrived at an answer to this question, it never can. All physical events—all physical causes, all physical constituents of reality—are embraced within the history of nature, which is to say the history of what already has existence. The question of existence, however, concerns the very possibility of such a history, and the expectation that the sciences could possibly have anything to say on the matter is an example of what might be called the “pleonastic fallacy”: that is, the belief that an absolute qualitative difference can be overcome by a successive accumulation of extremely small and entirely relative quantitative steps. This is arguably the besetting mistake of all naturalist thinking, as it happens, in practically every sphere. In this context, the assumption at work is that if one could only reduce one’s picture of the original physical conditions of reality to the barest imaginable elements—say, the “quantum foam” and a handful of laws like the law of gravity, which all looks rather nothing-ish (relatively speaking)—then one will have succeeded in getting as near to nothing as makes no difference. In fact, one will be starting no nearer to nonbeing than if one were to begin with an infinitely realized multiverse: the difference from nonbeing remains infinite in either case. All quantum states are states within an existing quantum system, and all the laws governing that system merely describe its regularities and constraints. Any quantum fluctuation therein that produces, say, a universe is a new state within that system, but not a sudden emergence of reality from nonbeing. Cosmology simply cannot become ontology. The only intellectually consistent course for the metaphysical naturalist is to say that physical reality “just is” and then to leave off there, accepting that this “just is” remains a truth entirely in excess of all physical properties and causes: the single ineradicable “super-natural” fact within which all natural facts are forever contained, but about which we ought not to let ourselves think too much

[Anonymous No.14363255]

How to get over NEVER being able to learn the fundamental nature of reality? It’s literally the thing I most care about finding out in my life.

[Anonymous No.14363410]

>>14363255
read Guenon

[Anonymous No.14363438]

>>14363410
Not into theosophists, sorry

[Anonymous No.14363487]

If the substrata is unreachable by any conceivable procedure and causally/informationally closed-off from us then why worry about it?

[Anonymous No.14363530]

>>14363487
Its nature fundamentally informs the conditions of our very existing and knowledge of it would therefore render certain forms of life more apt than others. Our cosmological ignorance makes our lives mere tragicomedies.

[Anonymous No.14363556]

>>14362590
>>14362592
BASED. You would like George Ellis.

[Anonymous No.14363720]

>>14363255
The nature of change is an interdependent dynamic between being and becoming that is manifested in every aspect of change. For example in calculus this is expressed as the relationship between integration and differentiation as inverse operations of the same process, and this is mirrored by our perception of change which includes two reference frames or perspectival modes of change-perception: instantaneous change in the present and cumulative change over time. This is also expressed as the rhythm of knowledge between discovery and understanding; our experience of present change is the continual re-discovery of the continually changing world, whereas understanding attempts to anticipate and interact with it effectively over time.

This brief introduction should hopefully be enough to inspire you, if you're receptive to it and have existing understandings to hook into it. The apparent simplicity is a deception, the subject is overwhelmingly vast in its involvements and intersects all fields of inquiry.

[Anonymous No.14363733]

>>14363530
Think of it this way: you're allowing yourself to be tormented by a logically impossible desire. You'll never resolve it, so are you actually being rational by letting it concern you? The substrata is either totally causally disconnected and thus has no effects on our world whatever, or the effects it does have are completely inscrutable to us and so useless as any basis for guidance.

[Anonymous No.14364000]

>>14363438
read Shankara then

[Anonymous No.14364156]

So op admits he doesn't care to find out what reality is made of but rather what he wished it were made of.
I'll spare you my evaluation of his endeavor.

[Anonymous No.14364194]

>>14364156
oh get over yourself you insufferable faggot