[FRIAM] more modal realism

[Prof David West]

Frank, it was definitely a panic attack, but with a strange sense of observing myself having one. I have had similar experiences where I was aware that my body was going into shock, but somehow remaining independent and being able to "manage" the process with meditation and breathing techniques.

This is definitely a provocation for the consciousness deniers — I not only feel conscious, but simultaneously meta-conscious.   *:)*

davew


On Tue, Dec 28, 2021, at 5:37 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Dave,
> 
> Would you call the anxiety you experienced a "panic attack"?  I've had a couple each of which was stimulated by a dream in which I was going to be trapped inside of something (claustrophobia).  In each case it took medication to dissipate the intense anxiety.  Also, I think I had a milder attack when I first smoked marijuana in 1966.  Given my background it's tempting to understand the intense ones as unconscious memories of birth.
> 
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> 
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
> 
> On Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 4:38 PM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> An experiential (400 mike trip):
>> 
>> In the beginning there was Nothing —  the Singularity. Then a quite literally impossible differentiation occurred; setting of a chain reaction of differentiation and hence Something(s).
>> 
>> This experience parallels the Taoist dictum that from One came Two, from Two Four, and from Four Everything. Of course I was aware of Taoism before I had the experience, so maybe what I "observed" was merely a visualization of a concept encountered decades ago.
>> 
>> BTW, this was the closest I ever felt at mental risk. Part of the experience was observing two "flawless diamond necklaces" then descending into an infinite recursion of differentiation: e.g. one necklace had an imperfect diamond, the diamond had a near invisible flaw, a single atom in the lattice was misaligned, a quantum string was vibrating incorrectly, ... . It was actually anxiety inducing as I watched my mind tripping out.
>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Dec 28, 2021, at 12:50 PM, glen wrote:
>> > It's OK. I fixed your larding format.
>> >
>> > Just like with your challenge to what "possible" means, we have to also 
>> > challenge the use of "random". You can't say "experience is random" 
>> > without some kind of _set_ or _space_ of experiences from which to 
>> > choose. E.g. it makes sense to say things like "There exist a black 
>> > ball and a white ball. Choose one at random." It does not make sense to 
>> > say "There exists nothing. Choose an experience at random."
>> >
>> > So we need some sense of a set of experiences from which to choose. We 
>> > can conflate concepts like "choice", "select", and "random" together, I 
>> > think. But we have to talk seriously about what *exists* ... the set of 
>> > things from which the selection selects. This is where Lewis has an 
>> > advantage. Anything that could exist, does exist. We don't have to 
>> > worry about construction of nothing to something, from a little bit of 
>> > stuff to a lot of stuff, etc. It's all already out there.
>> >
>> > But to toss in a little more grist just to help skip over all this to 
>> > get to the question:
>> >
>> > Then we have to talk about what you're calling repetitions or 
>> > regularities ... "laws", rules to which the extant things adhere (or 
>> > would/will adhere if we ever got around to 
>> > measuring/perceiving/experiencing them). As I've ranted, there are 2 
>> > features we probably want: consistency and completeness. Any 2 things 
>> > from the set of extant things shouldn't contradict each other. And the 
>> > set of extant things has to be complete. I.e. we can't dream up stuff 
>> > that is NOT in the set.
>> >
>> > This is where counterfactuals play a role. When we talk about different 
>> > things within a world versus different worlds, we're talking about 
>> > contradictions/inconsistencies. But counterfactuals come in 2 senses, 
>> > the (broader?) linguistic one (future [plu]perfect?) and the 
>> > (specific?) logical one.
>> >
>> > I think we could derive a way of *counting* worlds based on the way we 
>> > *count* things within a world.
>> >
>> > Without that minutiae out of the way, back to the question: Regardless 
>> > of whether the choice of things from a world, or the choices of a world 
>> > is *random* or not, when we talk about regularities/patters over 
>> > collections of worlds, is that probabilistic? Or is it a clear case of 
>> > sizes/measures of those collections? My guess at the answer is that 
>> > every particular world will always be distinguishable (observability) 
>> > from every other particular world. There are no equivalence classes 
>> > unless we gloss/abstract some predicate/selector/choice. But maybe 
>> > there *are* some inevitable equivalence classes ... like 
>> > complementarity in quantum mechanics, where something is always 
>> > unobservable, unreachable, behind the ontological wall. If that's the 
>> > case, then our choice/selection methods must be probabilistic, a 
>> > partial versus total ordering/sizing.
>> >
>> > Please remember that I don't *believe* any of this, personally. I'm 
>> > simply building a defensible answer to the question "Why is there 
>> > something, rather than nothing?"
>> >
>> > On 12/28/21 11:10, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>> >> On 12/28/21 09:30, glen wrote:
>> >>> 
>> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds
>> >>> 
>> >>> We see something like this in evolutionary justifications of various phenotypic traits, the most egregious being evolutionary psychology, but including Nick's hyena penis and the ontological status of epiphenomena. Yes, I'm posting this in part because of EricC's kindasorta Voltaire-ish response to what might seem like my Leibnizian defense of bureaucracy. But I'm also hoping y'all could help with the question I ask later.
>> >>> 
>> >>> Of course, I'm more on Spinoza's (or Lewis') side, here, something closer to a commitment to the existence of all possible worlds. I'm in a running argument at our pub salon about the metaphysical question "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" My personal answer to that question, unsatisfying to the philosopher who asked it, is that this is either a nonsense question *or* it relies fundamentally on the ambiguity in the concepts of "something" and "nothing". Every denial of the other proposed answers (mostly cosmological) involves moving the goal posts or invoking persnickety metaphysical assumptions that weren't laid out when the question was asked. ... it's just a lot of hemming and hawing by those who want to remain committed to their own romantic nonsense.
>> >>> 
>> >> Ok, I don’t know whether my nonsense is romantic, but here it is.  Experience is essentially random.  So, to answer the question, there is mostly nothing.  Indeed, experience seems often to repeat itself, but all random processes repeat themselves, and so are still nothing.  Every once in a while, however, such repetitions are so persistent as to beyond our capacity to shrug them off as random, and these experiences are somethings.
>> >> 
>> >>> But a better answer might be something like: Because the size of the set of possible worlds where there is something is *so much larger* than the size of the set of worlds where there is nothing. And one might even argue that all the possible worlds where there is nothing are degenerate, resulting in only 1 possible world with nothing. [⛧]
>> >>> 
>> >>> I don't think this is a probabilistic argument. But I'm too ignorant to be confident in that. Can any of you argue one way or the other? Is this argument from size swamping probabilistic, combinatorial? Or can I take a Lewisian stance and assert that all the possible worlds do, already, exist and this is just a numbers thing?
>> >> OOOOOPS!  My always-slippery grasp on the word “possible” has failed.  What do we mean, in this context, by “possible”?
>> >
>> > -- 
>> > glen
>> > Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.
>> >
>> >
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