Nothing is fundamental by Francesco D'Isa

Dear Francesco,

i have some further annotations about the antinomy your presented in chapter 6 of your essay and would be happy if you could evaluate my considerations.

The antinomy states that "Every truth is relative". As you outlined in the essay, such truths are relative to other truths. If these other truths wouldn't exist, those truths that refer to them couldn't exist either.

So it seems that if I cut out any truth out of such a system of interdependent relationships, I end up with what Nagarjuna called 'emptiness'.

But you need not invoke a violation of the principle of non-contradiction to make your sentence R true under all circumstances. What it says is that there are relative truths and there are absolute (fundamental) truths. The absolute truths are absolutely true relative to an absolute reference frame, the relative truths are merely true relative to a reference frame that is itself relative. the absolute and the relative realms are relative to each other, without altering their truth values.

The relative truths are possible only by negating the rule of non-contradiction, but nonetheless reside within ordinary logic, since it is logical that by negating the rule of non-contradiction, one can 'prove' or 'disprove' everything. I put the words 'prove' and 'disprove' in quotation marks, since nothing can be proven with a system that does not obey the rule of non-contradiction.

If I have a yard stick of length one meter and a yard-stick of length two meter, the latter is longer than the former. Negating the rule of non-contradiction or reside to some visual illusion does not help. We build our technologies from such differences that are true. Surely, if the meters do not exist anymore, the statement that one yard-stick is longer than the other would be an empty statement. But the statement that one yard-stick was longer than the other would remain true.

If the physical world will end at some point in time in total emptiness, it will remain true that one yard-stick was longer than the other, otherwise one cuts out a relative truth out of the totality of relationships and this totality should colapse like a domino-effect, if this totality is indeed an interdependent net of relationships. Nonetheless cutting out a truth out of this totality, one had to assume that one exactly knows what total emptiness really means. It then would mean some irrational, unfathomable magic, that leaves intact the other relative truths which were once only defined to be true in relation to the truth one has cut out.

I strongly suspect that talking about 'emptiness' as a real ontological possibility is talking about something we really don't know what we are talking about. One cannot know what total emptiness really means exactly, and at the same time pretend to not know what it exactly means (hence, nonetheless labeling it as unfathomable). Either it follows some rules or it doesn't follow some rules. If one pretends that it does both things, one merely pretends that total emptiness isn't totally empty, because it behaves in some way (randomly).

One can only properly define such a total emptiness relative to some existing relationships by merely taking away all these relationships, hence in this case this emptiness wouldn't be anymore an irrational, unfathomable magic, but again relative to the relationships one has eliminated. It would merely be an imagined antipode of existence, an antipode of Descarte's cogito ergo sum.

Nagarjuna's lines of reasonings start with that subjective knowledge of existence (cogito ergo sum) and ends there, because Nagarjuna confused the external world with the internal world - because he concluded from the known (his inner world with its opposite and / or complementary aspects) to the unknown (total emptiness): if he takes away all relationships within himself (in the case of his death), then the fundament of the world must be total emptiness, so he concludes. But as we know, when people die, the world will still exist. So Nargajuna confuses the cogito ergo sum and his own dead (or dead in general).

The moral of all of this is for me that we cannot really know what it means for everything to be 'totally empty', we even cannot know what it means for individuals to be dead. And since we can't know how it is to be dead (since in this state there is no perception anymore), we end up with a contradiction of wanting to know how we should think about existence, relative to total emptiness. About the latter we don't know anything, so we conclude that we also don't know anything about the former. That's Nagarjuna's logic, and it is logical insofar that it is consistent, hence follows some coherent rules. Even the consequences of eliminating the rule of non-contradiction are logical for us, so that at the very end, either 'total emptiness' is magical nihilism, a contradiction that generates a seemingly non-contradictory world, or it is something we don't know what we are talking about. As far as physics and the external world is concerned, I would say that this external world doesn't show any signs of deep contradictory behaviour (even the imagination of purple unicorns cannot alter this), so I would say that Nagarjuna's system of explanations is due to the fact that he simply didn't know why he exists and why he at some point in time had to die. Many people don't know either, but due to common sense, this isn't necessarily a reason for magical nihilism.

I would appreachiate your points of view on that as a philosopher.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Francesco,

thank you very much for your reply.

I would agree on most of what you wrote, except for the case of absolute truths in relation to relative truths.

There is a subtle difference in constrasting the relative with the absolute. It mustn't be another relationship as we usually think about all the other relationships that mutually define each other and do both vanish if one part of such a relationship vanishes.

As I tried to outline in my essay, for logically thinking about reality, one has to presuppose that there is truth and falsehood independent of personal evaluations.

If something turns out to be true, its possible truth value 'False' vanishes, but its truth value 'True' remains. If something turns out to be false, its possible truth value 'True' vanishes, but its truth value 'False' remains.

By presupposing that both truths values, 'True' and 'False' can only coexist and if one of them vanishes, the other must vanish too, one introduces absolute relativism. But the crucial point here is that this absolute relativism is constructed by the premise that a realm of absolute truths must have something to do with a realm of relative truths and the concrete ontological connection is identified in the subject's mind and its inability to unequivocally discriminate between some absolute and some relative truths.

My point to deliver was to elucidate that absolute relativism is arbitrary in exactly the sense that the subject is free to correlate whatever it wishes to correlate with each other. As you rightfully noticed, if the results of such deliberate correlations would in every case reflect an ontological truth, we would end up not only in a deeply contradictory world, but also in a deeply arbitrary ontological world and the very notion of an external world (ontology) would vanish - together with the epistemological world. All the mutually exclusive opinions of different conscious subjects about certain possible truths cannot all be true at the same time, unless one denies the existence of some fundamentally invariant ontological elements.

Again here too: making the terms epistemic and ontological interchangeable and strongly interdependent, if one part of the equation vanishes, the whole equation vanishes. But this can't be the case, since if one nonetheless adopts to absolute relativism, nothing really vanishes, neither the external world nor the internal world. It is only in the imagination of the subject, since this subject is confronted with the vanishing of the world - of *his/her* world - when the subject dies. This shows that absolute relativism isn't a realistic option, since when a subject dies, the ontological world will remain in existence.

According to your framework, the same must then be true for the truth values 'True' and 'False'. If one of them vanishes, the other isn't forced to vanish, but must remain existent. Since we can adopt the same logic to the values 'absolute' and 'relative', even here, if one of those attributes should vanish, the other attribute should further exist. Surely and obviously, it is an unreasonable thought to assume that some 'relativity' or some 'absoluteness' should 'vanish' at all - how should this be possible without some magic or deep irrationality one is tempted to ask.

If we nonetheless erase 'absoluteness', we arrive at absolute relativism with its inherent problems described above. So the only possibility left is to erase 'relativism'. One can only do this by realizing that 'relativism' is a concept that is intimately intertwined with the human ability to make certain choices. In fact, human choices can deny the existence of absolute truths. But can human choice also deny the existence of relative truths? I think human choice can't do that, because relative truths absolutely depend on the human ability to make choices. In this sense, relative truths are no truths, their truth values are undefinable for the single case. Relative truth values can only defined globally as 'relative' - due to the fact that human choices are possible, but not for the single case, since these single cases the whole lot depend solely on the choice of the subject.

If one denies that humans have a choice at all to accept something as true or false - for example due to a strict determinism - then even the concept of absolute relativism must fail, since there is an absolute truth behind everything, namely strict determinism. Even the assumption of such a strict determinism may occur as a relative truth in your framework, since it cannot be proven or disproven. But this does not mean that neither of both possibilities is an ontological fact. It is simply unclear (maybe forever) whether or not such a strict determinism is ontologically the fact or not.

One can surely also say that neither determinism nor 'inderterminism' (human choices) are ontologically the fact. I think Nagarjuna would have replied so. But what would such a statement *mean*? I think it would simply mean that we really don't know what's really, really ontologically most fundamental. But again, that we don't know this does not mean that it doesn't exist. Nagarjuna may again reply that it surely also can mean that such a most fundamental does simply not exist, because the 'most fundamental' is incomprehensible emptiness. But that is only the perspective of a human being imaginating his/her own being dead. The ontology of existence does survive this, otherwise we end up with solipsism.

Francesco, I would like to thank you for an engaging discussion and for your openess to discuss some fundamental issues. It will always be a pleasure to discuss with you these things.

Best wishes from germany,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Francesco,

since in my previous post the blank lines have been eliminated, I post my comment again, trying to convince the system to behave in the normal way.

So thank you very much for your reply.

I would agree on most of what you wrote, except for the case of absolute truths in relation to relative truths.

There is a subtle difference in constrasting the relative with the absolute. It mustn't be another relationship as we usually think about all the other relationships that mutually define each other and do both vanish if one part of such a relationship vanishes.

As I tried to outline in my essay, for logically thinking about reality, one has to presuppose that there is truth and falsehood independent of personal evaluations.

If something turns out to be true, its possible truth value 'False' vanishes, but its truth value 'True' remains. If something turns out to be false, its possible truth value 'True' vanishes, but its truth value 'False' remains.

By presupposing that both truths values, 'True' and 'False' can only coexist and if one of them vanishes, the other must vanish too, one introduces absolute relativism. But the crucial point here is that this absolute relativism is constructed by the premise that a realm of absolute truths must have something to do with a realm of relative truths and the concrete ontological connection is identified in the subject's mind and its inability to unequivocally discriminate between some absolute and some relative truths.

My point to deliver was to elucidate that absolute relativism is arbitrary in exactly the sense that the subject is free to correlate whatever it wishes to correlate with each other. As you rightfully noticed, if the results of such deliberate correlations would in every case reflect an ontological truth, we would end up not only in a deeply contradictory world, but also in a deeply arbitrary ontological world and the very notion of an external world (ontology) would vanish - together with the epistemological world. All the mutually exclusive opinions of different conscious subjects about certain possible truths cannot all be true at the same time, unless one denies the existence of some fundamentally invariant ontological elements.

Again here too: making the terms epistemic and ontological interchangeable and strongly interdependent, if one part of the equation vanishes, the whole equation vanishes. But this can't be the case, since if one nonetheless adopts to absolute relativism, nothing really vanishes, neither the external world nor the internal world. It is only in the imagination of the subject, since this subject is confronted with the vanishing of the world - of *his/her* world - when the subject dies. This shows that absolute relativism isn't a realistic option, since when a subject dies, the ontological world will remain in existence.

According to your framework, the same must then be true for the truth values 'True' and 'False'. If one of them vanishes, the other isn't forced to vanish, but must remain existent. Since we can adopt the same logic to the values 'absolute' and 'relative', even here, if one of those attributes should vanish, the other attribute should further exist. Surely and obviously, it is an unreasonable thought to assume that some 'relativity' or some 'absoluteness' should 'vanish' at all - how should this be possible without some magic or deep irrationality one is tempted to ask.

If we nonetheless erase 'absoluteness', we arrive at absolute relativism with its inherent problems described above. So the only possibility left is to erase 'relativism'. One can only do this by realizing that 'relativism' is a concept that is intimately intertwined with the human ability to make certain choices. In fact, human choices can deny the existence of absolute truths. But can human choice also deny the existence of relative truths? I think human choice can't do that, because relative truths absolutely depend on the human ability to make choices. In this sense, relative truths are no truths, their truth values are undefinable for the single case. Relative truth values can only defined globally as 'relative' - due to the fact that human choices are possible, but not for the single case, since these single cases the whole lot depend solely on the choice of the subject.

If one denies that humans have a choice at all to accept something as true or false - for example due to a strict determinism - then even the concept of absolute relativism must fail, since there is an absolute truth behind everything, namely strict determinism. Even the assumption of such a strict determinism may occur as a relative truth in your framework, since it cannot be proven or disproven. But this does not mean that neither of both possibilities is an ontological fact. It is simply unclear (maybe forever) whether or not such a strict determinism is ontologically the fact or not.

One can surely also say that neither determinism nor 'inderterminism' (human choices) are ontologically the fact. I think Nagarjuna would have replied so. But what would such a statement *mean*? I think it would simply mean that we really don't know what's really, really ontologically most fundamental. But again, that we don't know this does not mean that it doesn't exist. Nagarjuna may again reply that it surely also can mean that such a most fundamental does simply not exist, because the 'most fundamental' is incomprehensible emptiness. But that is only the perspective of a human being imaginating his/her own being dead. The ontology of existence does survive this, otherwise we end up with solipsism.

Francesco, I would like to thank you for an engaging discussion and for your openess to discuss some fundamental issues. It will always be a pleasure to discuss with you these things.

Best wishes from germany,

Stefan Weckbach

o.k, fqxi has formatting problems. Sorry Francesco, you have to read it as it has been translated by the system.

Hi Francesco, since i don't know when the system's formatting abilities will work again regularily, i attach my comment from above as pdf-file. I wrote to fqxi to repair the formatting procedure, since the problem is virulent also on other essay pages.Attachment #1: FrancescoDIsa.pdf

Dear Francesco, yes Berlin is a cool city; und du kannst richtig gut deutsch! Viele Grüße aus Deutschland, Stefan.

Francesco,

I would contend that we must have rules that foster our continued existence and that fundamental involves what is necessary for existence. "Fundamental" would become irrelevant without a sentient creature to apply it to our natural world. I see fundamental as relative to our state of knowledge in that it changes with each discovery. This in turn necessitates our having an open mind and not creating obstacles to its changing nature. For example, not letting our institutions or belief systems perpetuate the belief that the world is flat or the Earth is the center of the universe. Our lexicon of existence must see that concepts do change and that there is an element of relativism to our culture. "Emptiness" by definition suggest no underlying essence, which to me leads to nihilism, "nothing in the world has a real existence." Humans cling to existence and set up institutions to prolong it (though climate change might seem otherwise). These are ideas that I build on in my essay. I hope you can comment on it. Your thoughts are an important contribution to the concept we are writing about, indicating that fundamental is not absolute in meaning.

Jim Hoover

Francesco,

What if Nothing is fundamental? 1 is relative to -1, so they cancel out to zero. Wouldn't that mean zero is the fundament? This might seem a silly question, but consider physics, rather than math. Isn't space the physical equivalent of the mathematical zero?

What is the speed of light relative to, but the vacuum? According to GR, time and distance, the clock and the ruler, dilate equally, so that light is always measured at C, but wouldn't the frame with he least dilated time and distance, the longest ruler and fastest clock, be the closest to the equilibrium of this universal vacuum of space?

As measures of distance and duration can be correlated, time and space are presumably the same relative substance, but we could correlate volume and temperature, using ideal gas laws, why wouldn't they be the same? Time and temperature are both measures of action. One is individual frequency and the other is mass frequency and amplitude.

The problem of time is because our consciousness functions as flashes of cognition, so we think of time as the present "flowing" past to future, which physics codifies as measures of duration, but it is really change turning future to past. As in tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as events form and dissolve.

We are mobile organisms and so we equate events with moving through space. Neither the past or future physically exist, because the energy only exists in the present. It is "conserved." It is our ability to live outside the present, unlike plants and most animals, that gives us the power we have, but like understanding the universe is not geocentric, it does take some objectivity to understand the basis of this effect.

As for the idea the universe is expanding away from some event 13.8 billion years ago, one of the first patches to that idea was when Hubble and the other early theorists discovered that all those distant galaxies are redshifted directly proportional to distance, which made us appear as the center of the universe, so it was argued space itself must be expanding, because Spacetime! So every point must appear as the center. The fallacy is this totally overlooks the original premise of GR, that light is always measured as a Constant in the frame. That both clock and ruler are dilated equally. If it is taking light longer to cross this frame, in order to be redshifted, obviously it is not Constant to it.

So two metrics of space are being derived from the same intergalactic light, so which is the real space?

As for the idea that space is three dimensional and is an effect of geometry, rather than geometry a mapping of space; Nonsense. Three dimensions are the xyz coordinate system and require an 0,0,0 center point, which is a subjective location in space and any number can define the same space. Much as each of us is the center of our own coordinates. Consider how much political conflict is about applying different coordinates to the same space. Are longitude, latitude and altitude foundational to the surface of this planet, or just an effective mapping device?

So I would argue, that for physics, space is the fundament.

Regards,

John B. Merryman

Francesco,

Sorry for delay reverting, I read & made notes on yours & others on a trip and left them there! Now back. Brilliant essay, excellently explained and rigorously argued. We do agree. Good chat on my string but I'd like to raise a matter of logic emergent from my work, including the top scored 2015 essay on red/green socks.

I've proposed that the problematic 'Law of the Excluded Middle' and the binary maths it lead to, are at the root of all problems and paradox! Shocking!? But I do suggest a replacement; Everything, that's EVERYTHING! has a Gaussian/Bayesian distribution! Even Ying and Yang somewhat 'blend in'. The class of valid 100% True/Not true cases is very limited, largely only metaphysical. See also Phillips essay here.

So I proposed the 'Law of the Reducing Middle', which has a non-linear sine curve distribution between maxima 1 and 0, as does QM. Look hard and it's clear that IS nature. Send binary signals down a fibre optic cable - nature will 'round them off' so we need booster stations to 'square' the waves up again.

You're not either stoned or not stoned. You may be stoned a little with a few small ones, or infinitely ANY amount. ANYTHING can happen in the universe with some non-zero degree of probability. NOTHING is 100% certain.

The implications are massive. Godel emerges. Paradox disappears. Maths follows propositional ('modal') logic as the hierarchical rule of brackets in arithmatic.

Even more shocking; Cartesian co-ordinate 'wire frame' become real spaces, which can't overlap, so also then a more logical near infinite hierarchy of 'inertial systems'! (spaces in motion within spaces as described by both Herman M and Albert E).

Do have a think and question it. In the meantime your score down for a boost shortly.

Very best

Peter

Francesco,

As time grows short, I check those I have commented on to see if I have rated them. I find that I rated yours on 2/10. Hope you can check out mine.

Regards,

Jim Hoover

Dear Francesco,

thank you for a really nice essay!

I had a lot of fun reading it; I think it is really well written. Also, I strongly agree with parts of your message: physical "objects" are, in general, only defined relationally. This includes all their properties. I think you explain and argue for this very nicely. I would also agree that even the question of (physical) *existence* of an object expresses a relational statement.

However, I have an objection, and I would be interested in how you respond to it. Namely, relativity of *properties* (of things, or objects; or even of their existence) seems something very different from relativity of *truth*. For example, the position of Earth is only defined relative to a reference frame; but once we have specified one, we can talk about relational properties like "distance between Earth and Sun" as having objective content, and statements about these properties being objectively true or false. Or do you think we can't?

And if you think we can't, how do you defend your position (or even just your stable being in the world) against total arbitrariness?

Here's an example from your text: you write

"What we judge real [...] is particularly limited in its timescale. Tomorrow the sun will rise, but it was not thus in a remote past, ..."

When you say this, don't you mean that this statement is an absolute truth? And isn't it interesting that we *do* know this fact, even though we haven't lived in the remote past? I would say it's because of the success of science which is itself because of a stable form of objective truth.

But I don't want to pontificate ;-) I'd just be really interested in your answer to thoughts like these.

All best wishes,

Markus

Francesco,

No, wasn't me, you'll be very pleased to hear I haven't applied the rating to yours yet and it'll be a top score. (I hope its the same re mine!). The 'Law of the Reducing Middle' was in my (scored 2nd) 2013 'It from Bit' essay; "The Intelligent Bit". (All these top peer scored finishes but not once in the prizes! Not that that matters except as a litmus test of mainstream thinking).

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/31419?sort=community

Very best

Peter