[FRIAM] more modal realism

[Eric Charles]

That all seems right to me.

We could even imagine that there is only one universe, and it is normally
nothing, but that, during very short windows within the time when it isn't,
sometimes sentient life springs up and asks silly questions.

Have you tried countering with "Why NOT something?"


On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 3:01 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes. I made the anthropocentric argument at one point. Either I did a bad
> job of it, or he rejects it for some other reason. But I have NOT made the
> sheer numbers argument yet. An ordering in time, like you use with "long
> enough" doesn't seem, to me, very distinct from an ordering in space
> (number of universes).
>
> But maybe that does help answer whether it's probabilistic or not. (I'm
> assuming by "slightest change", you meant "slightest chance".) A single
> universe with a chance of spontaneous somethingness definitely sounds
> probabilistic to me, whereas the set size ordering in space does not. But
> that makes me feel like I'm contradicting myself. If ordering in time isn't
> different from ordering in space, then why would ordering in time be
> probabilistic but ordering in space NOT be?
>
> Identifying that conflict in my own thinking helps. Thanks.
>
> On 12/29/21 11:44, Eric Charles wrote:
> > This always struck me as such a weird discussion. I've had people try to
> drag me into it a few times.
> >
> > If there was ever the slightest change that  something could come from
> nothing, and nothing was around for long enough, eventually something would
> come from it.
> >
> > But, I think the better point is something like: While I don't know how
> many of the "possible worlds" might exist... I can assure you that all of
> them in which someone asks "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
> are worlds in which there is something.
> >
> > So even if the vast majority of the possible worlds had nothing, it
> would still be true that 100% of the worlds in which people-in-bars asked
> such questions, would be worlds with something.
> >
> >
> > <mailto:echarles at american.edu>
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 28, 2021 at 12:31 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:
> gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >
> >     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds <
> 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.
> >
> >     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?
> >
> >
> >     [⛧] This is not my own metaphysics, assuming that's stable, which is
> ... uh ... semi-monist (?) ... maybe pseudo-monist ... along the lines of
> an open-ended, increasing degrees of freedom universe ... whatever that
> might turn out to mean.
>
> --
> glen
> Theorem 3. There exists a double master function.
>
>
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