Essay Abstract

Starting from a physical and philosophical interpretation of Nagarjuna's theory, this paper will suggest that the idea of a system of "fundamental" rules is misleading, because of every entity's intrinsically relational nature. Following this, the paper will examine a re-definition of the concept of "fundamental", through the idea of absolute relativism, whose paradoxical nature ("the fact that every truth is relative is an absolute truth?") will be dealt with through an additional paradox, called the "super-liar paradox".

Author Bio

Francesco D'Isa (Firenze, 1980), by education a philosopher (Graduated at the University of Firenze, Italy) and a visual artist, after his debut "I." (Nottetempo, 2011) has published novels such as "Anna" (effequ, 2014), "Ultimo piano" (Imprimatur, 2015), "La Stanza di Therese" (Tunué, 2017) and essays for Hoepli and Newton Compton. He is editorial director of "L'Indiscreto", and he writes and draws for several magazines.

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Dear Francesco D'Isa,

You confused me with the "Nothing is Fundamental" title of your essay. Are you suggesting thar everything is sophisticated?

Joe Fisher, Realist

    Francesco,

    A truth is defined by what you can do about it, which is nothing. No choice. Then, a truth is an absence of choice.

    Philosophy is the exercise of the choices that are left to make. But, because it proceeds by making choices, it can never produce a truth, i.e. a system using choices cannot be used to demonstrate an absence of choice (truth).

    Marcel,

      Dear Joe Fisher,

      thank you for reading my paper. Excuse me, the title can be a little ambiguous. In short, I would suggest more that "everything is relative".

      Bests,

      Francesco

      Dear Marcel,

      thank you for reading my paper. That's an interesting point for sure. Anyway, you start from an axiomatic definition of truth ("A truth is defined by what you can do about it") that is intrinsically relative (to you, to the uses of it, to other things etc). The consequences of it are suggested in my text.

      Bests,

      Francesco

      Dear Francesco,

      i read your essay and have two questions:

      Is there anything that due to your analysis must necessarily be labeled as being undoubtedly and inevitably necessary to exist - contrary to assuming that all existence is just relative to total non-existence?

      And if yes, how and why do you come to that conclusion?

      Second question:

      Are possibilities and necessities with which we operate in philosophy merely subjective terms or do they reflect - due to your analysis - an objective (objective in the sense of being independent from subjective musings about what could be fundamentally necessary and what could merely be possible) role to play in external reality?

      Stated differently: Is it logically necessary according to your analysis that the external world must necessarily and inevitably incorporate the very logical distinction between the possible and the necessary (whatever this 'external' world may turn out to be)?

        Dear Francesco!

        There is no clear statement that "everything is relative".

        In nature, everything exists independently of our minds. Relativity arises in our mind. Things become relative when compared.

        Best regards

        Ilgaitis

        Dear Stefan,

        Thank you for reading my essay, I bookmarked yours as well, it seems very close to my interests and I will read it soon.

        Your questions are very interesting and I think I get the point of them. I would sum up them as it follows: if something is necessary, like the logical distinction between the possible and the necessary, not everything is relative. But if this logical distinction is not necessary, the whole argument can't work.

        This is a similar paradox of the one of §6, and I would answer in the same way: the whole argument about logical distinction between the possible and the necessary is, as well, relative (to people who state and discuss it, to languages, to logic rules, to physics laws, to minds structures ecc ecc). In other words, every argument against absolute relativism is relative, and confirm it while it contradicts it.

        I hope I understood properly your questions, thank you again.

          Dear Stefan,

          Thank you for reading my essay, I bookmarked yours as well, it seems very close to my interests and I will read it soon.

          Your questions are very interesting and I think I get the point of them. I would sum up them as it follows: if something is necessary, like the logical distinction between the possible and the necessary, not everything is relative. But if this logical distinction is not necessary, the whole argument can't work.

          This is a similar paradox of the one of §6, and I would answer in the same way: the whole argument about logical distinction between the possible and the necessary is, as well, relative (to people who state and discuss it, to languages, to logic rules, to physics laws, to minds structures ecc ecc). In other words, every argument against absolute relativism is relative, and confirm it while it contradicts it.

          I hope I understood properly your questions, thank you again.

          Dear Francesco, thanks for your reply and bookmarking my essay.

          If I adobt the view that everything is relative, I am posed with some serious questions:

          External reality is an (in)finite net of relationships, facilitating its very absolutely relative structure by dropping or adding some axioms for different deduction schemes. In fact, every distinct deduction scheme could be a certain combination of other deduction schemes, respectively the axioms of those schemes. For 1) being an absolute truth, one must confess that 'everything is possible', since any fundamental *impossibility* would only be *relatively impossible*. So, there are no absolute impossibilities ever existent that could express some non-relative truths. The latter enables a multitude of ex nihilo creations, even for the 'fact' that reality should indeed be absolutely relative - since it cannot be excluded that this 'absolute relativity' was once produced by literally what I call in my essay 'nothing' (no logic, no quantum foam, no imagination, no time and space etc.).

          So how can you exclude that your absolute relativity was not spit out of some deeply irrational ex nihilo process? If you can't exclude this, how can you discriminate between your absolute relativity as merely being an 'ex nihilio' creation of your mind instead of an ontologically real ex nihilio creation? Surely, your attempt doesn't exclude anything a prori, but I think this strategy may run into some problems I want to scribble below.

          How can you exclude that if such a 'nothing' cannot be excluded that at least the possibility of all existence vanishing again into pure 'nothing' can be excluded? I think on the basis of your considerations you can't exclude even that scenario.

          The main question now is whether or not this absolute relativity only resides inside your mind or is an objective fact of external reality. I don't know how your approach does answer this question, but personally I think the mutually exclusive alternatives of either a totally solipsistic world where everything is defined as relative or that of an external reality being existent (forever) must be answered before making any statement about 'fundamentals' - since you can't state that solipsism AND an external reality are equally real (surely you CAN state this, but it does not make any sense to me without further elaborating on what is the relationship between the inner world of the mind and the external world). So, by taking your approach seriously, do you think that this comment was written by something other than a part of your imaginary world? If yes, how can you relativize an external world by your approach, since it is obviously true without doubt that I wrote this comment to you. And if you really believe in solipsism, is your motivation to reply to my comments anything other than self-confirm that you indeed live in a solipsistic world? More seriously, what could enable you to find out that you don't live in a solipsistic world?

          Finally, isn't the whole debate about excluding the rule of non-contradiction merely an alternative way to deny that there is an external reality at all that is different from solipsism?

          Dear Francesco,

          I think FQXi.org might be trying to find out if there could be a Natural fundamental. I am surprised that so many of the contest's entrants do not appear to know what am fundamental to science, or mathematics, or quantum histrionics.

          Joe Fisher, Realist

            Dear Ilgaitis,

            thank you for your comment!

            I don't think that things doesn't exist outside our minds. But things can not be relative or compared only inside our mind.

            Each thing, indeed, whichever way it manifests, needs at least one other thing to define its limits and characteristics. Without any relationship differentiating one thing from another, the first would coincide with the second. Without relationships at all, we would have nothing.

            Things that can't be compared, are not thingS.

            Best regards,

            Francesco

            Dear Joe,

            maybe you are right, but such a question arise necessarily philosophical questions. Moreover, they wrote

            "This contest does not ask for new proposals about what some "fundamental" constituents of the universe are. Rather, it addresses what "fundamental" means, and invites interesting and compelling explorations, from detailed worked examples through thoughtful rumination, of the different levels at which nature can be described, and the relations between them."

            Bests,

            Francesco

            Hi Francesco, i have some further remarks and hope you appreachiate or at least consider them.

            I have difficulties to grasp the truth of your statement

            "the fact that every truth is a belief."

            I think that it is true that every belief can be considered a truth - but only on a meta-level in the sense that it is surely true that at the moment, I believe this or that or you believe this or that.

            But: one has to consider that not all beliefs necessarily must turn out to be true. There are tons of false beliefs out there. For example I may believe from the beginning of the essay contest on that my computer monitor is a living elephant, sitting on my desktop. Obviously this can not only NOT be a relative truth, but a complete falsity.

            How does your approach reconcile the fact that there exist mutually exclusive beliefs? For example one may believe that he is just a boltzmann brain, in the sense of solipsism. Another may believe that there is an external reality and other real observers out there besides him that are also conscious. Both beliefs cannot be true at the same time.

            What you term 'relative truths' cannot be the whole lot only relative truths, since not all beliefs can be equally true. Some beliefs are simply false and with no truth within them. Another example: some people believe in a God, some people believe that there is no such thing as God. In my opinion both beliefs do mutually exclude each other. Either there is a God, or there isn't a God.

            Believing in something is a property of conscious beings. Truths are a matter of being independent of conscious beings. It is true that the world will continue to exist when I am dead. The world including you will not vanish into nothing when I die, but eventually I will vanish into nothing when I die.

              Dear Stefan,

              excuse me if I've not replied to your other comment, it's a complex one and I need some more time to think about it.

              Regard "the fact that every truth is a belief.", it doesn't imply any solipsism. Its meaning is simply that we can't deny in any way "the fact that every truth is a belief."- beyond the truth value of what we believe.

              I can believe that the world has been done by a huge pancake, or to the big bang theory. I can believe that things fall down to the ground because of evil elves or the force of gravity. Then I can argument these persuasion with less or more efficacy, but in the end I have to believe to these arguments. ("Believe" in a broad sense, like I use in my essay talking about Avicenna).

              Thank you again for your mindful insights, I will answer soon to your other comment as well.

              Francesco

              Dear Stefan, thank you for your comment.

              To sum up, your very interesting argument is that in absence of an absolute impossibility, everything is possibile, even that everything is not relative.

              This is another version of the paradox of §6. Regarding the absolute relativist point of view, the process is similar as the one I described before: the truth of this new argument is relative to the parameters I adopt - not only logical parameter, even factual ones.

              We can't conceive a world (physical, logical...) without the principle of contradiction or other basic logical rules that makes these truths possible - but ours is anyway relative to these rules.

              To say that everything is not relative is like to live in a red world showing a red card to demonstrate that everything is not red, because the card is a square.

              As you point out in the rest of your comment, without an absolute impossibility, every kind of absurdity is possible. This is not really a problem, because absurdities are possible only relatively to different rules, where our basic principles fails.

              Regarding solipsism, it sounds more like the skeptic problem. How can we state for sure the truth of the external world and of our senses and intelligence? We can't, of course. But that there's not an external world could be a deception as well.

              Dear Francesco,

              thank you for your paper! I hope I won't make a fool of myself, but I have a question on which I would ask you to elaborate, if you can.

              As I understand it from your quotation, Nagarjuna position seems to be about the relativity of beings more than the relativity of truths - i.e. every thing that exists does so because is relative to something else. This, as I remember, should be an ontological belief shared by the latest Plato.

              Nevertheless Plato itself seemed to assume that "truth" (aletheia) is somehow equivalent to "all things" (to on); you seem to have taken this assumption and made it the (unspoken) foundation of your reasoning.

              This leads me to the following question: mathematical truths (i.e. the fact that 2+2=4) are relative to what?

                Dear Donald,

                thank you for reading my paper and for your comment!

                To answer to your interesting question: In §2 I talk about the relativity of beings. Then, in the rest of my paper, I expand the idea to "truth", that I use (in quite an unspoken way, sorry) as "something that is true", or better "a true fact".

                Mathematical truths (i.e. the fact that 2+2=4) are relative, between the other things, to mathematical rules (i.e. addition).

                Bests,

                Francesco

                Dear Francesco,

                This was a beautifully written essay, with interesting ideas. I agree on the relational nature of things, or at least that all we can know are relations. More precisely, relations in which we are part. Whether or not reality is purely relational, this idea is also fundamental for mathematics. Mathematical structures are just sets and relations. An n-ary relation is a subset of another set which is a Cartesian product of n sets. In fact each set A is an 1-ary relation, being a subset of A itself. So mathematical structures are just relations. And, surprisingly as it may be, all mathematical structures are like this (I gave more details here). Again, it is a metaphysical assumption we have that there is something more than this in the physical world, and the assumption that only relations exist is also metaphysical, and there seems to be no objective way to prove any of them. But why make the least economical assumption in this case? I find it more convenient to take the relational position. Now, does this mean that there is no reality? This would pose a problem, since relations themselves may be that reality. Throwing away the relations leaves us with no structure at all. What can we get if we throw away the sets connected by the relations? Making them empty sets doesn't help, and not because there will then be no relations, but because you can rebuild everything out of the empty set alone. I very much agree with relationism, and I think that the emptiness you mention is as empty as the quantum vacuum. I mean, no matter how vacuous we may thing it is, it has some structure, which is relational, but still a stable frame.

                About the ballerina, the relation (link) seems to lead to the wrong place. Not related to your essay, I wrote about the illusion you mention on my blog, where I explain that there is a definite sense of spinning. This is because the author of the illusion did not remove the relation between the ballerina and her shadow encoded in the laws of perspective.

                I liked how you handled the paradox at the end of your essay. In fact, I used the interplay of those principles you discuss, of contradiction and of non-contradiction, to propose a possibility to get everything out of nothing in this older essay, page 7.

                I replied to your comment on my page as well. I wish you good luck with the contest!

                Best wishes,

                Cristi

                  Dear Cristi,

                  thank you very much for your insightful comment and appreciation. You will lead me to read the whole set of your essays, they are all great. You have a new reader!

                  I agree with what you write about relations, and I found your "zero axiom" very interesting; it has for sure similarities with the final part of my paper. Yours is a nice way to handle the Ouroboros, to use the basic self-contradiction paradox as source of every possibilities - by the way it's for the same reasons also the source of their inexistence.

                  (of course the ballerina was just an example, but your solution is brilliant!)

                  Bests,

                  Francesco