Reality comprehensibility: are there illogical things in reality?

post by DDthinker · 2024-04-30T21:30:32.932Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

Contents

  Introduction
  Metaphysics
  Cosmos specifics
  Fundamental reality
  Review of my ideas
  Concluding remarks
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Introduction

For all thought that an actor in the cosmos (such as yourself) does, the ability to comprehend reality and the nature of reality as being comprehensible is foundational to understand. With ourselves as entities which make sense of reality via our perception, everything seems to follow logic and reason and as such to answer the question "are there illogical things in reality?" I propose an axiom I call the 'the axiom of thought' which states that reality and explanations about it are logical and all evidence points to there being no illogical things in observable reality. The axiom of thought assuming the logicality of reality can have two classes of logicality which can either be 'phenomenal rule abidance' which deals with phenomena following logical scientific laws which describe phenomena such as natural selection being a phenomenal rule/law which must be abided by matter or 'thought rule abidance' which deals with methods of reasoning as seen in logic and mathematics. For 'thought rule abidance' logical rules determine things can either be true or false but not both e.g. an apple being red or not and mathematical rules determine what the accounting and measurement of things via numbers follow numerical rules e.g. 1+1=2. An interesting avenue of thought I haven't investigated is that perhaps mathematical rules can be violated by things which go beyond the physical finite world such as zero and infinity with zero and infinity being the limits of numbers as dividing by zero and manipulations including infinity can lead to violations of mathematical logicality. Key ideas from this discussion can be determined in the following:

Along with the axiom of thought determining that reality is logical, the specific way reality follows logic can be determined. For the logical organisation of the cosmos, there first need to be abstract concepts and ideas which from general to special details describes the logical organisation of physical and concrete things of the cosmos. For example metaphysics and then currently through scientific principles, physical things manifest in ways as specified by concepts. This can be seen in mechanics such as using Newton's laws of motion which describes the configuration and manifestation of physical things as dictated by abstract concepts which in this case are Newton's laws. With physical things manifestation from concepts this can be stated in what I call the 'nonarbitrary reality principle' which states that things are organised in reality due to logical concepts and not random choice in which this applies also to the most general and unspecific aspects of reality. For instance the nonarbitrary reality principle is at odds with the somewhat arbitrary empirically determined concepts of physics' fundamental interactions like electromagnetism in which I argue electromagnetism hasn't seemingly got reasons for the way it and as such I feel there is probably more fundamental reasoning which derives the concepts of interactions like electromagnetism and that could be what academics should be researching. Another idea hailing from the scientific revolution is what I call 'the clockwork universe perspective' which states that physical things work through time based on well defined concepts and laws (like clockwork); this can be seen in the the orbits of the planets and the mechanisms by which biological cells work in which it all obeys logical reasoning of the axiom of thought of things being logical and reasonable. Key ideas from this discussion can be determined in the following:

Another thing I feel is of note to reality comprehensibility ideas is that philosophical rationalism, which is the idea that pure reasoning rather than empiricism should be the path towards knowledge, could be justified as given reality is logical, pure reasoning should be enough to understand the workings of reality with evidence not being necessary, although practically for inspiration and for highly complex situations which are hard to predict with reasoning, empiricism can still be used. This is contrary to the empiricism of modern science which in my opinion could be one of its failings especially in physics in which the rationalistic reasoning for the way things are is seemingly often ignored. This rationalism can be seen in my electromagnetism example which requires rationalistic reasons for the way electromagnetism is such as why the concept of charge is the way it is. Currently electromagnetism is simply accepted based in evidence but not by it being logically necessary in the universe by some reasoning.

Metaphysics

With abstract concepts dictating how physical things are organised in the universe, metaphysics should be the place to start when determining these abstract concepts. Metaphysical notions of things, time, space, and motion seemingly haven't got reasons for being the way they are in which they are implicit in reasoning about the world with things in space and time being the setting where reasoning plays out. Beyond the simplest assumptions and axioms about the universe there needs to be (metaphysical) reasons for the way things are in which things are not arbitrary per the nonarbitrary reality principle. Time's extent either to the past or future can be conceived to extend infinitely and isn't arbitrarily stopped at a beginning or end of time; the universe isn't arbitrary and is logical in its foundations as per the nonarbitrary reality principle. If time didn't extend infinitely there should be a reason for it however no obvious conclusions for such a hypothesis based in fundamental intuitions of reality can be made so the only nonarbitrary conclusion is that it is infinite. In this treatment I don't consider the big bang as being metaphysical reason for a beginning of time as I have a distrust of empiricism for telling us about what the fundamental reality really is like as evidence may be misleading and not relate to the fundamental reality. Along with the infinite extent of time, similar arguments of the nonarbitrary nature of reality can be made for the infinite regress of causality, the infinite extent of space, the infinite extent of spatial scale, and the nonarbitrary nature of fundamental motions. These arguments about metaphysical nonarbitraryness can be stated in the following:

Another question I have is whether there may be a nonarbitrary reason for there being three dimensions of space although it could also be considered axiomatic. One possible reason is that three dimensions could allow for a freedom for physical things to be complex (perhaps per the anthropic principle) which can take a variety of forms or maybe it's a mathematical impossibility for there to be greater than three dimensions although I wouldn't know about that.

Cosmos specifics

With rationalism being justified by reality being logical and thus not requiring empirical evidence to figure out how reality is, I've investigated the specific character and particular things of the cosmos with logical reasoning constraining what is logically possible in reality in what I call 'cosmos specifics'. The specifics of the cosmos are based in a principle I call 'cosmic rationalism' which states the true cosmic situation may be unobservable and have barriers to understanding (e.g. via the simulation hypothesis) so rationalism and reasoning without empirical evidence is necessary. Some may question the ability to reason about the cosmos without evidence however the ancient Greeks proposed atomism, which is the idea that the physical universe is composed of minute particles, which later on was proven accurate by empirical observation so I feel the specifics and details of the cosmos can be filled in using rationalistic reasoning without evidence.

In investigating cosmos specifics, matter is the first thing that can be examined. Without empirical evidence of fundamental matter and how it really is, physical things external to the self and in the environment can be observed and thus have attributes made to them. Observable physical things have complex behaviours e.g. people are things which behave in complex ways and as such the generic stuff that physical things are made of also has intrinsic behaviour which I call 'matter intrinsic behaviour'. The generic stuff of matter which makes physical things doesn't need to be observable in which if we lived in a simulation, physical things would still have complex behaviour and that behaviour would still need to originate from some where which would be the base reality matter (matter outside the simulation) that would have matter intrinsic behaviour. From matter intrinsic behaviour, the intrinsic behaviour of matter has a definitive cause from an object of some kind in which such an object could be termed an 'atom'. These atoms would be placed in the cosmos in some way in which as all matter can be thought to display with intrinsic behaviour given matter doesn't arbitrarily not have intrinsic behaviour, atoms should compose matter. With atoms composing matter, atoms are of finite size to be definable objects (and not infinitesimally small) and are smaller in scale than the structures which display with behaviours. Key ideas from this discussion can be determined in the following:

My ideas of atomism can logically infer the existence of atoms which is not a new concept however the nature of matter can be further illuminated and determine novel ideas such as what I call 'the hierarchy'. The main point of what I call 'the hierarchy inference' is the nature of causality in which as I've discussed previously, causality can have an infinite regress in which causes are effects of previous causes which themselves are effects of further back causes. This process can be iterated infinitely in which I'd argue an effect with no cause is illogical and so arbitrarily stopping the infinite regress of causality with a supposed initial effect with no cause can't be argued as there is no metaphysical evidence that implies a special effect and it goes against the nonarbitrary reality principle. Causality can be seen in atoms causing matter's intrinsic behaviour and so this argument of the infinite regress can be applied to atoms with atoms having behaviours which itself is an effect which has a cause, that is to say atoms themselves have behaviour which are caused by something which can follow the previous arguments of atomism and imply atoms have within themselves atomlike particles which cause intrinsic behaviour of matter. These arguments can be iterated infinitely in an infinite regress of atoms of atoms of atoms... forming the hierarchy of atomlike particles which occur in discrete levels going to increasingly smaller spatial scales. I feel this argument resolves a previously unidentified issue of physics with atoms having a cause for their behaviour in stuff like quarks however these elementary particles are arbitrary in their character and one could ask "but what causes quark behaviour" and so on infinitely. In my magnum opus of WAK11 I discuss these ideas further and ultimately attempt to illustrate cosmos specifics among my other theories in which instead of assuming arbitrary physical fundamental interactions (e.g. electromagnetism) which could be the way they are for no reason, I give reasons for such things.

Fundamental reality

With reality comprehensibility dealing with explaining reality, reality can be distinguished between the real and fundamental reality and the observable universe which may not be fundamental in which cosmos specifics with its cosmic rationalism tries to study this fundamental reality compared to the observable universe. Some people speculate that a fundamental reality could be a multiverse however I'd disagree as there is little metaphysical evidence for one especially with varying characteristics with varying physical laws. In my further discussions of cosmos specifics I conclude intelligence is an integral and logical part of the universe so the anthropic principle suggesting universes of a multiverse have been selected in their physical laws to be suitable for intelligence could be dismissed; cosmos specifics gives reason to the laws of physics so they shouldn't vary for no reason. Fundamental base reality can also be seen in discussions of the simulation hypothesis in which in my opinion I feel we probably live in a simulation according to my further discussions of cosmos specifics in WAK11. Fundamental metaphysical notions such as space and time probably are not substantially altered in a simulated world as the simulation would be embedded in the base reality and thus inherit fundamental metaphysical notions.

Review of my ideas

In this post I've explored a variety of my ideas specifically dealing with how reality can be comprehended and then its effects on describing phenomena of reality as in metaphysics and cosmos specifics. My ideas of reality comprehensibility I feel are foundational for all thought and should be emphasised more in philosophy in which in my view it could be placed as a foundational principle of what I call 'thought philosophy' (described in my document WAK11) which is the philosophy of thought that encompasses current epistemology and some of logic. Along with describing thought, the treatment and description of phenomena should assume things have reasons for the way they are rather than merely ad hocly constructing theories based in evidence which according to cosmic rationalism may be misleading and not relate to the fundamental reality. Overall I see my ideas I've presented as being quite valuable and instructive.

Concluding remarks

Given I'm an autodidact and an amateur thinker outside the scientific and philosophical community and hoping to popularise my ideas, I'd like to ask for feedback on my ideas in case you perceive deficiencies in my explanations, as well as asking for my ideas to be shared and spread if you found any of my ideas as important as I feel they are. I'd also like to direct you towards further reading such as my magnum opus of WAK11 (here, best viewed on PC instead of mobile) which lays down all my ideas in which I'd recommend 'structure selection' as being definitely quite good in which it also discusses cosmos specifics in case you were interested in it. If you want to follow my activity I've also got an X (twitter) account (here) and my email can be found on my YouTube channel (here).

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