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, thompnicks...@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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