Philosophy: Prove you exist

[Everstruggling]

Is ‘static universe’ an oxymoron…

Care to explain?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

"Ani Ibi:

No. In the early universe, time is a fourth dimension of space.

cool … what does it look like…so I can imagine it?

Hawking: The Beginning of Time

This article also has some insights into ‘static’ universe and first cause.

It seems that Quantum theory, on the other hand, can predict how the universe will begin. Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time… One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there’s another kind of time in the vertical

direction. This is called imaginary time…

He is talking about visualizing space and time on a graph. Real time and space are horizontal. Imaginary time is vertical.

The three directions in space, and the one direction of imaginary time, make up what is called a Euclidean space-time…

James Hartle of the University of California Santa Barbara, and I have proposed that space and imaginary time together, are indeed finite in extent, but without boundary.

They would be like the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions.

If space and imaginary time are indeed like the surface of the Earth, there wouldn’t be any singularities in the imaginary time direction, at which the laws of physics would break down. And there wouldn’t be any boundaries, to the imaginary time space-time, just as there aren’t any boundaries to the surface of the Earth.

This absence of boundaries means that the laws of physics would determine the state of the universe uniquely, in imaginary time. But if one knows the state of the universe in imaginary time, one can calculate the state of the universe in real time.

continued…

 

[I_Leatherman]

Care to explain?

92?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

I am not sure how one can calculate the state of the universe in real time from knowing the state of the universe in imaginary time. But I’m curious. Thoughts?

One would still expect some sort of Big Bang singularity in real time. So real time would still have a beginning.

But one wouldn’t have to appeal to something outside the universe, to determine how the universe began.

Instead, the way the universe started out at the Big Bang would be determined by the state of the universe in imaginary time.

Thus, the universe would be a completely self-contained system. It would not be determined by anything outside the physical universe, that we observe.

Hawkings argues against Deus ex machina. However, is it possible to argue for Deux in machina?

God = the state of the universe in imaginery time? Thoughts?

The no boundary condition, is the statement that the laws of physics hold everywhere. Clearly, this is something that one would like to believe, but it is a hypothesis

. One has to test it, by comparing the state of the universe that it would predict, with observations of what the universe is actually like. If the observations disagreed with the predictions of the no boundary hypothesis, we would have to conclude the hypothesis was false. There would have to be something outside the universe, to wind up the clockwork, and set the universe going.

So the jury is still out.

Interestingly enough, the other article I gave on the flexiverse – also on Hawking’s thoughts – states that the nature of the universe depends on how we observe it.

How can Hawking reconcile the two points of view? Thoughts?

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

To be honest, I think the question is absurd. Particularly on a religious bulletin board. Whether or not we can prove we exist is beside the point and has nothing to do with anything.

Simone Weil writes:
“If we find fullness of joy in the thought that God is, we must find the same fullness in the knowledge that we ourselves are not, for it is the same thought. And this knowledge is extended to our sensibility only through suffering and death.”

My “existence,” therefore, has nothing to do with me. Justifying myself to myself is not a particularly interesting exercise–it’s merely solipsistic and involuted. If I believe that God is, then I know that I am not–that if I am anything, it is not my own doing.

The atheist is at least right in this regard: because we take our own nothingness to be the truth of our being, because we have confused emptiness with substance thereby, and because we attempt to understand God with reference to our own absence of substance, (taking that absence as substantial), the God of such an understanding is bogus. Similarly, God, who is All-Real, appears to us as Nothing because we do not understand what Reality really is. In short, we have it all backwards.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

Deo Gratias!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

I Leatherman:

Static means static entropy

This would be an oxymoron.
I Leatherman:

not static time?

This would also be an oxymoron.
I Leatherman:

But with a universe that is accelerating exponentially, in the future there must be increased entropy in a near infinite universe volume over an ever increasing period of time.

Not sure what you mean by ‘ever increasing period of time.’ But without that phrase what you propose is plausible. Some scientists think that this will happen. The universe will just have so much entropy that everything will stop working and history will grind to a halt.

Some think that there is a force which counteracts expansion. The strength of that force would:

a) be strong enough to stop the expansion and start a contraction of the universe;

b) be strong enough to stop the expansion but not start a contraction of the universe;

c) be too weak to stop the expansion and the universe would expand to the point of maximum entropy, things would stop working, and history would grind to a halt.

Coupla decades some Canadian scientists discovered something in the microwave background which could be such a force. Their discovery started a whole new flurry about God being the thickening in the ‘thick soup’ of the universe. Time I believe headlined the news as a discovery of the existence of God.
I Leatherman:

Entropy increases, though the potential energy of the universe remains the same. …

Depends on from where you are observing, I guess. But I would think generally not. The following is my understanding and I could be dead wrong:

An increase in potential energy > an increase in entropy.

At the Big Bang, the universe had zero entropy. And zero potential energy, but maximum kinetic energy.

At the Restaurant at the End of Time, the universe will have maximum entropy, maximum potential energy, and zero kinetic energy.

 

[Everstruggling]

Everything?

Give the man a cigar!!

Oh shoot. I don’t exist, sorry. :crying:

Hey, could you be a pal and observe yourself getting a cigar? :tiphat:

 

[Vaclav]

What an interesting thread.

What makes a book a book. What makes a computer a computer? How do we define a book or a computer? Here we bring in Plato’s Theory of the Forms, that books and computers come in a variety of forms and styles, techniques and specifications. But in the world that is outside the cave, there is a book, a computer, the essence or the ultimate form of what a book or computer really is.

No there is not. Occam was partially correct about this. Words like “book” and “computer” are merely abstract conveniences of the human mind. The word “two” (or for that matter the symbol ‘2’) is not equal to the mathematical value of 2 because of some great universal perfect TWO that exists in splendor and glory outside of the allegorical cave. It is simply a convenient abstract so that you and I can discuss mathematics more easily.

Similarly, God, who is All-Real, appears to us as Nothing because we do not understand what Reality really is

I disagree. The fact that Jesus Christ was a man, as well as divine, is extremely important to our theology. That sacrifice, by itself, for God to show His infinite humility and love to be born of Mary and raised as an infant (when He certainly could have descended to Earth in a completely different manner) is very real and of extreme importance.

The most simple answer to the original question is this:

I must exist and you must exist because solipsism is dumb.

If you really want to get into why that is, that’s another question entirely.

 

[rr1213]

I post, therefore I exist. You, however, are a figment of my imagination.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

The fact that Jesus Christ was a man, as well as divine, is extremely important to our theology. That sacrifice, by itself, for God to show His infinite humility and love to be born of Mary and raised as an infant (when He certainly could have descended to Earth in a completely different manner) is very real and of extreme importance.

Vaclav, I absolutely agree with you–but the Reality of the Incarnation has less to do with God looking like us and therefore being Real and more to do with us suddenly looking like God and gaining Reality thereby. In other words, the Incarnation makes us Real. But the Real to which it knits us is the Reality of a self-emptying God. A Fullness which we cannot comprehend and which looks (in the words of Eckhart) like a “Brilliant Darkness.” It is this All-Real Nothingness (so called because it surpasses what we think of as material substance) which is entirely Full to which we are bound in the Incarnation.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

Deo Gratias!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Deo Volente:

To be honest, I think the question is absurd.

The question is absurd. Therefore?

Your use of the term ‘absurd’ brings to mind The Theatre of the Absurd and its precursors, notably Lewis Carroll. My impression of this preoccuption with absurdity is that it was a child of modernism cultivated in a sense of powerless and cynicism in the face of the Shoa, nuclear proliferation, and the separation of culture and science from religion.

That having been said, can the genres of nonsense and absurdity tell us anything about being? If so, then what?
Deo Volente:

Particularly on a religious bulletin board.

Why particularly on a religious board?

See Faith can never conflict with reason
Deo Volente:

Whether or not we can prove we exist is beside the point and has nothing to do with anything.

Some say that about hockey, yet we still watch it. You do not offer any support for your claim that the quest for proof of our existence has nothing to do with anything. Yet you post at length on being and non-being. Is this not a self-contradictory – or at least confusing – position?
Deo Volente:

Simone Weil writes:
“If we find fullness of joy in the thought that God is, we must find the same fullness in the knowledge that we ourselves are not, for it is the same thought. And this knowledge is extended to our sensibility only through suffering and death.”

My “existence,” therefore, has nothing to do with me. Justifying myself to myself is not a particularly interesting exercise–it’s merely solipsistic and involuted. If I believe that God is, then I know that I am not–that if I am anything, it is not my own doing.

This non-being Weil biographer Dr Jacques Cabaud explains as:

This must be understood in the light of two trends in Simone Weil’s thinking. The first is that of Christian humility. The second trend is an anti-ontological mode of thought proper to the Buddhist tradition. There was in Simone Weil a kind of aesthetic nostalgia towards what Paul Valery called “the purity of non-being”. This is in my eyes the regrettable expression of an aspect of oriental philosophy: it is also to be found in modern philosophy, for instance in Sartre.

To which Martin Heidegger responds:

“Being is essentially different from a being, from beings”. The “ontological difference,” the distinction between being (das Sein) and beings (das Seiende), is fundamental for Heidegger. The forgetfulness of being which, according to him, occurs in the course of western philosophy amounts to the oblivion of this distinction.

This distinction is also made in Aquina’s response to Damascene #98 and #99. And in Barfield:

The participation of primitive man (what we might call “original” participation) was not theoretical at all, nor was it derived from theoretical thought. It was given in immediate experience. That is, the conceptual links by which the participated phenomena were constituted were given to man already “embedded” in what he perceived… Perceiving and thinking had not yet split apart, as they have for us.

Weil again:

The atheist is at least right in this regard: because we take our own nothingness to be the truth of our being, because we have confused emptiness with substance thereby, and because we attempt to understand God with reference to our own absence of substance, (taking that absence as substantial), the God of such an understanding is bogus. Similarly, God, who is All-Real, appears to us as Nothing because we do not understand what Reality really is. In short, we have it all backwards.

Ah! And once again we come back to the very large question of the role of observation in being.

I observe therefore I am.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Everstruggling:

Give the man a cigar!!

I am of the female species… er… gender.

Everstruggling:

Hey, could you be a pal and observe yourself getting a cigar? :tiphat:

As long as it’s a licorice cigar. The other kind looks somewhat problematic.

cuban-leaf.com/images/hitchock_cigar.gif

 

[Ani_Ibi]

The most simple answer to the original question is this: I must exist and you must exist because solipsism is dumb.

Simple but illogical.

 

[Everstruggling]

I could be wrong about my understanding of ‘static’ universe.

However, I believe that the ‘staticness’ or ‘dynamicness’ of a universe is irrelevant to first cause.

Because of the no-boundary conditions at the start-point of all possible universes.

I have to say I feel at a slight disadvantage here. My knowledge of physics looks…

something like this.

And you appear to have a knowledge of physics that looks…

like this!

But then I don’t even know enough about physics to ascertain how just good your knowledge of physics is. My only claim to fame in physics is to have read “A Brief History of Time” from cover to cover. (I did before I realized it was more fashionable not to. :hypno: )

I did, however, do pretty well in Logic. The “necessary beings” that crop up in this conversation seem to me to have much in common with logical truths. The idea being that it is not possible to imagine a world in which the contrary is possible. It isn’t important if they are real universes, just whether it is possible to imagine such universes. For instance, it is impossible to imagine a world without quantity since nothing is a quantity and every other amount is a quantity.

It is possible to conceive of a universe in which there is no change. It always was and always will be the same. In formal logic dreams, heaven, hell, one dimensional universes, and the planet Kuzqbane all count when considering all possible universes. (The “q” is silent by the way.) There is nothing logically inconsistent with a universe that doesn’t change, has never changed, and will never change. If nothing changes, there is no effect except “being”. But in this universe, “being” has always been the case. It was never caused. So, in this theoretical universe, there is no first cause because there is no cause at all. I might have botched that slightly. You might say the effect is “being” and the cause is “nothing”. But that seems to trivial a point to argue. I don’t know of theists who would be comforted by the knowledge, “God has to exist because God could be nothing.”

Here is where my knowledge of physics falls down. It might be that somehow, someone has proven that there are no static universes. (I really don’t know how you would prove this.) Perhaps they are using the term “universe” differently. It wouldn’t matter. It is like your universe where the potential for proof exists. It doesn’t need to exist for it to negate the impossibility of your existence.

In any case, is proving the existence of first cause necessary to proving that you or God exists? I am not convinced that it is. However, there are other routes to the proof for the existence of you or God.

God certainly doesn’t need to be the first cause. “First Cause” is hardly something that would inspire martyrdom. I don’t think many people become saints in order to become closer to “First Cause”.

God does have to be **something **though. If you are going to say that God exists, especially if someone is going to say that it is impossible to conceive of a universe without God, then God has to be something.

What is God? At least when I am arguing that I exist I claim to be a man. You know what a man is. You have seen men. Some of the people in this forum are men. We know what human beings are, everyone here is one.

What is this “God” that can not only be proven to exist, but is worthy of worship?

Hey, where did this soapbox come from? Sorry, just let me get down off of it now.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

It is this All-Real Nothingness (so called because it surpasses what we think of as material substance) which is entirely Full to which we are bound in the Incarnation.

It is full because God is immanent. Because God is immanent, we cannot truly be nothing.

 

[Everstruggling]

I am of the female species… er… gender.

Oops, my apologies. I guess it’s true what they say. When you assume you make an *** of you and Umption.

Oops, what I mean is that I’m sorry that I assumed, not that you are female.

Give that woman a licorice cigar. Oh wait, I don’t exist… (You know the rest. )

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

The question is absurd. Therefore?

Your use of the term ‘absurd’ brings to mind The Theatre of the Absurd and its precursors, notably Lewis Carroll. My impression of this preoccuption with absurdity is that it was a child of modernism cultivated in a sense of powerless and cynicism in the face of the Shoa, nuclear proliferation, and the separation of culture and science from religion.

That having been said, can the genres of nonsense and absurdity tell us anything about being? If so, then what?

Forgive me. I did not intend to invoke Beckett, Ionesco, Esslin etc. Although I think there is something to the dramaturgy of the absurd which reveals where we are culturally in relation to the dramaturgy of ancient tragedy. Jan Kott is particularly revelatory here: In tragedy, the hero is heroic because he must make a choice between at least two equally horrific and self-destructive options, and he makes his choice fully conscious of his demise. In absurdism, the character reaches the crossroads of choice, sits down, and refuses to move.

My use of the word “absurd” relates more to vanity than to theatrical or cultural aesthetic impulses or genres of literature or theater. Vanity in this sense–the argument will ensue, and we will convince ourselves one way or another and congratulate ourselves on the “achievement.” But what has been achieved? We’ve proved to ourselves that we are important? That we have substance? What joy can there be in such a proof, knowing that it’s fabricated by our own intelligence, or even fabricated by our own observations of our intelligence (or the universe or what-not). I.e., what joy is there in knowing that we just imagine ourselves being? Proof of our being or non-being must come from elsewhere, not from us.

Why particularly on a religious board?

See Faith can never conflict with reason

I’m not setting up an artificial dichotomy between faith and reason, but merely attempting to underscore the idea that we’re attempting to prove to ourselves something which religion teaches is proven to us by other means.

Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.

Some say that about hockey, yet we still watch it. You do not offer any support for your claim that the quest for proof of our existence has nothing to do with anything. Yet you post at length on being and non-being. Is this not a self-contradictory – or at least confusing – position?

“The quest for proof of our existence” itself seems a funny phrase to me. And, yes, solipsistic.

Are you saying that philosophy/theology is like hockey? Just around to keep us entertained during the “long dark march towards whatever it is we’re marching towards” (in the words of Tennessee Williams)?

“nothing to do with anything” is also a funny phrase, given the context of this discussion. But it’s a phrase I enjoy. And I maintain, this topic has nothing to do with anything. Nothing. Anything. Ha! (<—One more step taken on the long dark march.)

Seriously though, what does my own proof of my existence have to do with anything. Perhaps it’s comforting. But who needs it?

This non-being Weil biographer Dr Jacques Cabaud explains as:

I’m not sure if your highlighting job was meant to emphasize the difference between Christianity and Buddhism, as if they were intellectual opposites or some such. Read some of the Saints and Mystics of the church. Check out the Cappadocian fathers, or Dionysius the Areopagite. You may be surprised by what you find there re: Being v. Non-Being, the Nothingness v. the Void, the Fullness v. the Emptiness.

To which Martin Heidegger responds:

Oh Heidegger.

By the way, just so my own shortcomings are not attributed to Ms. Weil, only the stuff in quotes was a quotation from her.

Your point about observing and being is interesting. It seems like a very nice story.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

Deo Gratias!

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

It is full because God is immanent. Because God is immanent, we cannot truly be nothing.

How much of that immanence belongs to us, though? How much of that “we” is truly “ours”. What do I possess that may not be taken from me? That has not been given to me? What is inviolably mine?

Under the Mercy,
Mark

Deo Gratias!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Everstruggling:

But then I don’t even know enough about physics to ascertain how just good your knowledge of physics is.

It sucks. I did take a degree in engineering and from time to time I pick at that scab while sulking in polysyllabic abstract concepts.

Everstruggling:

My only claim to fame in physics is to have read “A Brief History of Time” from cover to cover. (I did before I realized it was more fashionable not to. :hypno: )

Oh my goodness! How hurt Hawking must be to learn that his life’s work is unfashionable. I think we should send him a CAF t-shirt.

Everstruggling:

I did, however, do pretty well in Logic. The “necessary beings” that crop up in this conversation seem to me to have much in common with logical truths.

OK. Let’s define it that way. Necessary being is logical truth. I am not using the plural ‘beings’ because as Heidegger has pointed out ‘a being’ is different from ‘being.’

Everstruggling:

The idea being that it is not possible to imagine a world in which the contrary is possible.

It is difficult for us to imagine this. Once again this devolves down into our ability to observe the universe.

Everstruggling:

It isn’t important if they are real universes, just whether it is possible to imagine such universes.

Our ability to imagine such universes flowers from our experience in observing. One could say that it flowers from our natures also.

Is our imagination finite? I think not. But our experience may be.

Our ability to observe therefore is a function of an imagination which is infinite and a set of experiences which is bound by space and time both of which are finite.

The experience of ‘contrariness’ is limited for some folks. (No chance of that on CAF!)



Therefore, for some folks whose experience of space and time is limited, it is difficult for them to imagine a world in which the contrary is possible.

Everstruggling:

For instance, it is impossible to imagine a world without quantity since nothing is a quantity and every other amount is a quantity.

This, as Aquinas points out is beyond culture. It resides in the realm of something akin to a marriage of Plato’s ideal realities and Heidegger’s forgetfulness of being: ‘word’ not as a cultural construct but as the participatory foundation for being.

Everstruggling:

It is possible to conceive of a universe in which there is no change. It always was and always will be the same.

We have experience of no-change. It is both culturally and pan-culturally imaginable.

Everstruggling:

If nothing changes, there is no effect except “being”.

There is no effect period. ‘Being’ is there but it is not caused, therefore it is not an effect. But this is internal to that universe and does not speak to a cause external to that universe.

Everstruggling:

But in this universe, “being” has always been the case. It was never caused. So, in this theoretical universe, there is no first cause because there is no cause at all.

Yes. That is one way of looking at it. I offered another way of looking at it when I suggested that God might be the imaginary-time, pre-Big-Bang universe from which the real-time, post-Big-Bang universe was created. A so-called external cause but one which flowed into its effect.

Everstruggling:

I might have botched that slightly. You might say the effect is “being” and the cause is “nothing”.

No. I am suspicious of nihilism.

Everstruggling:

I don’t know of theists who would be comforted by the knowledge, “God has to exist because God could be nothing.”

Because there would be no Consolation of Philosophy. Since Philosophy derives from ‘love of wisdom’ it would be unnatural for us to love something which offers no consolation.

For a theist, the consolation is affirmation of God.

For an atheist, the consolation is affirmation of non-God which is often – but not always – self.

continued…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Everstruggling:

Here is where my knowledge of physics falls down. It might be that somehow, someone has proven that there are no static universes.

It’s not important.

Everstruggling:

God certainly doesn’t need to be the first cause. “First Cause” is hardly something that would inspire martyrdom. I don’t think many people become saints in order to become closer to “First Cause”.

If there is a First Cause, then it is God. By definition. (Damascene’s idea of existence without reference to identity.) Where we run into challenges is in the identity of God (Aquinas’s insistence that existence hinges on identity).

Everstruggling:

God does have to be **something **though. If you are going to say that God exists, especially if someone is going to say that it is impossible to conceive of a universe without God, then God has to be something.

It is merely impossible for some folks to conceive of a universe without God. Therefore God does not have to be something.

Everstruggling:

What is God?

The Aquinas approach.

Everstruggling:

At least when I am arguing that I exist I claim to be a man.

There was a guy at Art School that wasn’t sure he was a man. Does that mean that he wasn’t sure he existed? Now this is no small matter. No small matter at all. I think he did question whether or not he existed

For me he definitely existed, but not on the basis of his gender identity. Was there another aspect to his identity which encouraged my belief in his existence? Good question.

The very least that could be said is that for me he existed on the basis of his participation in communication with me. That would be in the realm of ideas, physical presence, his artwork and so on.

Language called him into my neighbourhood. I believed I was in the neighbourhood of being. Therefore he was called into my neighbourhood of being. Therefore he existed.

Were his ideas, physical presence, and artwork his identity? No. They flowed from the same source as his identity but were not identical to his identity.

Plain and simply, he enlarged my observation of the world. How could he have done that without being part of **my **world? And without me being willing and able to see my world as larger than what it had been before meeting this guy?

So this is ‘being’ as a function of … well… ‘function’.

He enlarges my world therefore he is.

Everstruggling:

What is this “God” that can not only be proven to exist, but is worthy of worship?

Jesus. Before during and after His life on earth. In that sense the art student guy was a metaphor for Jesus.

Everstruggling:

Hey, where did this soapbox come from?

It’s not a soapbox. You’re standing on the shoulders of those philosophers who have gone before you. And those philosophers are standing on the shoulders of ‘necessary being.’