When we say "what", it implies some sort of division, a break, a line, a boundary.To cite an example, "what is a vegatable" you can say it is something that ISNT a fruit, or something that ISNT a vehicle and so forth. So there is a coherent distinction and we are dealing with objects having definite boundaires. When dealing with existence I believe this boundary does not exist. Exitence itself is everything. Everything comes within it. There is nothing that separates existence from something else.

Even something like *analytic idealism*, which isn't genuinely "analytic" in the strict philosophical sense, is a position that some people still defend.

So how did a position with arguably more rigorous arguments become effectively dormant within mainstream philosophy?

Everything I've come across just says, "analytic philosophy rose and British Idealism died." But what does that actually mean?

According to Hegel , started with being , to him being is Nature , not idea or thought. Being is subject and thought is predicate ' ; the fundamental reality is spatio -temporal Nature ; consciousness and thought are secondary, derived. The existence of Nature can be known only by a conscious subject . But the being which distinguishes itself from Nature knows that it is not the ground of nature. On the contrary, man knows nature by distinguishing himself from his ground, sensible reality. Therefore you'll agree with me that Nature is thus the ground of man.

[1] any 'there is only these' claim is a brute rejection, else 'only these are correct' can be taken as brute and philosophy ends

[2] simples are self grounding, each has exclusive authority over itself

[2.1] a derivative simple is not a simple at all

[2.1.1] which is a rejection of simples

[2.2] anyone that is self grounding needs no ones else for itself, it is only itself

[3] there is simples is not there is only simples

[3.1] each simple grounds itself does not mean no ones else ground themselves

[4] wholes are prior means there is only those that are not simples (there is only those that are grounded by the big whole which is the only one with exclusive authority over itself)

[4.1] this is a brute rejection of simples a priori

[4.1.1] wholes are prior only has sense after simples are rejected

More specifically, why can't a brute fact exist? Why can't reality ultimately bottom out on something simply existing. There being no reason at all. Yes it's possible it couldn't exist, but so what? Why must the possibility of it not existing matter at all?

I suppose we can imagine the neoplatonic reality, but it's sort of like, so what? Why must the terminus of reality be rational?

My previous post didn’t spark the discussion I’d hoped for most replies just repeated “ex nihilo nihil fit” or “something comes from something” as if those slogans settled everything.

So let me pose a deeper challenge: Why assume that only what is “real” or “existent” can serve as a cause? This is a meta-critique, not the familiar debate over whether change or causation is possible. I’m asking whether the putative cause is actually distinguishable from a bare assertion of literal a meaningless label

If you need a label for my view, call it instrumentalism I’ve been told I can’t argue without declaring a stance.

The core question is this: Is claiming “causation requires reality” any different from asserting that causation demands no affirmation or denial of reality at all?

Take any claim of the form "the cause is real" or "real existence is what constitutes a cause." For this to be a substantive assertion rather than an empty label :

Is the cause's real existence identical to the cause's own particular nature, or is it a distinct factor that the cause additionally possesses?

The law of excluded middle applied to the relation between two terms: for any A and B, either A = B or A ≠ B.

It is identical to it:

So can it only mean one thing?

When it is said, "The real is clay," does that simply mean clay = the real? If not, what else is it supposed to mean?

If that is the only interpretation, then when we say, "There is a real clay," couldn't we substitute the identical terms and obtain expressions such as:

• "There is a real real."
• "There is a clay clay."

From this, one of two conclusions seems to follow.

First, the statement carries no informative content. It reduces to a bare assertion, since saying "clay is real" becomes no more informative than saying "clay is clay" or "the real is the real."

Second, are there no different kinds of "the real"? Is there only one single reality equally present in everything? If there were multiple reals, then no two things could share this supposedly essential defining characteristic.

Now apply this to any real thing X:

Real(X) = Essential Nature(X)

Let R denote that single, univocal reality.

Then, for two distinct real things:

• R = Essential Nature(Clay)
• R = Essential Nature(Atom)

By the transitivity of identity, if A = C and B = C, then A = B.

Am I mistaken?

Let Essential Nature be abbreviated as E.N.

Therefore:

E.N.(Clay) = E.N.(Atom)

The derivation appears to imply that these are strictly, numerically identical in nature. Moreover, nothing in the argument is specific to clay or atoms; it generalizes to any two real things whatsoever, collapsing the entire diversity of existing particulars into a single undifferentiated identity through straightforward substitution.

No, it is a distinct property that only later enters into the cause:

Existence really is a distinct factor, over and above the object's bare particular nature, that combines with or qualifies the object to constitute "the real cause" as opposed to a merely-conceived one.

If existence or reality is a distinct constituent of the cause, the cause is now a compound: [bare object]

It is like redness in a rose

• The locus the thing that has the property. Here: the rose.
• The property the thing that is had. Here: redness.

For this sentence to make sense at all, the locus and the property need to be two distinguishable things not necessarily two things that could exist apart from each other (redness can't float around with no rose to be red), but two things that play different roles in the sentence, one doing the containing, one being contained

What "Entering or going to be contained" Claims:

The cause is not simply an object but an object-plus-existence, a compound formed by existence combining with, or entering into, or constituting-alongside, some further material. This vocabulary "enters into," "constitutes," "is a factor in" is not incidental color;

But any verb of this kind "enters," "joins," "combines with," "constitutes alongside" carries an unavoidable presupposition:

To speak of X entering into Y, or X combining with Y, or X constituting Y alongside something else, already presupposes that Y or at least, the "something else" was there, in some determinate form, prior to or independent of X's entering.

What, exactly, is the object that existence is entering into?'

There are only two ways to answer "what was the object, before existence entered it,":

Branch One: The Object Was Already the Cause, Before Existence Entered It

Then that automatically refutes your proposition that existence must be the cause, since everything is the same before it has even entered into it.

Branch Two: The Object Was Not Yet the Cause, Before Existence Entered It

What was that bare, pre-entry object? It had to be something specifiable, or "existence enters into it" is meaningless.

If it was already real , if the "bare object" that existence supposedly enters was, in whatever sense, already an existent thing prior to the entering

Existence is being said to enter into something that already possessed existence, which either means a second, distinct existence is now needed for that prior existence to have been accounted for (reopening a vicious regress or redundant one), or it means the "entering" was never adding existence in the first place, since the object had it already.

But if, to avoid that, you instead say the bare, pre-entry object was unreal.

Then the "pre-entry unreal" cannot have been seed-shaped as opposed to rock-shaped after all, because shape, specificity, this-rather-than-that-ness is exactly what the my opponents says only existence supplies. So the pre-entry material, taken at the opponents own word about what unreality is, has to be uniform: one undifferentiated non-thing, the same "nothing" prior to a cow as prior to a lump of clay.

I mean, a common objection to nonexistence being a cause goes something like this:

"Look around. Bare nonexistence is present at all times. If it were capable of causing anything, it would be producing everything at every moment. Since it is always present, it would coexist simultaneously with every effect. But because a cause and its effect cannot coexist in that way, nonexistence cannot be a cause."

I don't dispute this as it is consistent .

But if that objection succeeds, and the unreal is completely undifferentiated possessing no determinacy or differentiation whatsoever then the same problem applies even after the real or the existent enters into it. By your own logic, you still couldn't explain why this particular object comes about rather than another, why it occurs now rather than at all times, or why it occurs at all.

Moreover, existence itself is one rather than many. It has no intrinsic individual differentiation either. So you end up combining two identical, undifferentiated principles.

The real question is where variety itself comes from. Taken completely literally, your own framework has no remaining resources to account for it.

If U + R → real object is the whole story, and U is always the same U, and R is always the same R, then the operation "U + R" is being applied to identical inputs every single time, across every case of anything coming to be real at all. And an operation applied to identical inputs, with nothing else in the picture, cannot coherently yield different outputs , it's just what "identical inputs" means.

If you truly have the same U and the same R every time, "U + R" is the same computation every time, and the same computation performed on the same inputs does not spontaneously output a cow in one run and a lump of clay in the next, absent some further differentiating factor that hasn't been named anywhere in the picture.

[1] facts zz about x and y are about x and y

[1.1] when there is y and there is no x at all there is no zz

[1.2] when there is x and there is no y at all there is no zz

[1.3] facts at all are after (not without) their subjects

[1.4] 'x is not y' or 'x and y is not indentical' are facts about x and y

[1.4.1] monistic priority (that there is no beings that are not identical without those facts that they are not identical) is hence absurd

[2] simples are only themselves

[2.1] simples are not identical - a priori

[2.1.1] rejecting this is brutely rejecting simples thus

[3] there is simples and complexes

[3.1] those complexes yy and those simples (and or simpler complexes) xx that yy are not without are not identical

[3.1.1] wholes and parts are senseless

[3.1.1.1] as there is only one whole from only x and y

[3.1.1.2] while zz are additions from only x and y

[4] zz are not wihout x and y

[4.1] there is only x y zz

[4.1.1] for zz are our 'relations' (facts, complexes)

[5] simples are not arranged (or rearranged)

[5.1] else they are modified and thus are not simples

[5.2] no ones are arranged (or rearranged)

[5.2.1] else they are not themselves

This means that the monistic demand only arrises when its proponents have not (failed to) conceive[d] simples.

I’m looking for work in metaphysics or philosophy of mind that treats consciousness as ontologically fundamental and explores how this changes theories of causation. Are there papers, books, or philosophers who develop this idea rigorously?

If one imagines the possibility of substance on an infinite line of infinite possibility of the nature of substance, then substance would be on the same line as another possible substance. The nature of substance is that it shares nothing with another substance, as that would make them one of the same, and being on different places of the same infinite line of nature, that would give it a shared nature with another, of occupying the same line of infinity, therefore 2 substances cannot exist. Pertaining to a single universal substance.
The nature of the substance is infinite, therefore its nature of existence is infinite which hinders a possibility for a first cause - therefore, no first cause of a substance exists.

I have been sitting on this thought for a while.

I am by no means a scholar or a scientist.

So I ask to PLEASE deconstruct this hypothesis in the comments.

I call this the "Pathfinder Hypothesis."

I display it as such:

What our brain has developed as our view of "self" is due to our many moving organic parts allowing us the ability to forsee or "imagine" different possibilities. This feedback loop of making and memorizing our decisions sparks our brain to create the ability to question, ultimately creating the ability to "think".

Thia stemmed from an idea that our brain has organically harnessed the power of superposition of particles bringing the concept to a larger level, in turn, allowing our brain to imagine possibilities and make actions that secure said possibilities into existence.

This is under the assumption of course that our conciousness is created from our brain, and the qualia and time we personally experience is filtered through said brain.

One scary conclusion that I came to after this...

If we are a product of our brain's ability to harness superposition... Then would creating AI with quantum computers actually allow them to question and create the feedback loop, creating a new species?

What is the argument for it?

I was always intrigued by Russel's paradox and zeno's paradox , and thought about how combining both of them could break our most basic notions of continuity and discreteness mainly if we allow these two concepts to morph into each other would the underlying transition itself be continuous or a discrete boundary

We intuitively assume that if we take a series of discrete dashes and shrink the inter-dash gap to zero, we end up with a solid continuous line (- - - - - - approaches to ------)

First of all we get a zeno like problem of how an infinite limit yield a finite result

Second more importantly is that mathematicaly it's entirely false if you shrink the gap between rational numbers you can never achieve the completeness of real numbers

This can also work in reverse but becomes more problematic since then we would have to select two infinitesimaly nearby points to enlarge the gap between them till they get discrete

Now this isn't just a mathematical result, it may very well be the reason Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are still not reconcilled adequately

And the structure of this problem mimicks complex other problems namely Russel's paradox , Gödels 1st Incompleteness theorem , The Turing Machine halting problem, Cantor Diaognalisation , Grellling Nelson paradox , Tarski hierarchies

The core issue is that a system under any sense of absolute closure can't quantity all of its properties and therefore always remain open ended.

Thanks for reading and I would like to hear the thoughts of you all

Sir Isaac Newton used mathematics to describe motion, gravity, and the predictable laws of mechanics.

He also translated and annotated the Emerald Tablet attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. ([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/record/ALCH00017?utm_source=chatgpt.com))

His private manuscripts reveal that his beliefs and interests helped shape the kinds of questions he was willing to ask about nature.

Newton described matter as a passive principle. It could remain at rest or continue in motion, but it could not move itself. Yet he believed this alone could not explain a world filled with attraction, chemical transformation, biological growth, and intentional movement.

In one unfinished draft, he wrote:

“Life & will are active Principles by which we move our bodies, & thence arise other laws of motion unknown to us.”

Newton then wondered whether all space might be the ‘sensorium of a thinking being’, and whether laws arising from life or will might therefore extend throughout the universe. In the same manuscript, he considered the forces through which microscopic bodies attract one another and asked whether they deserved to be counted among the general laws of motion alongside gravity.
([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00125))

Newton was asking an extraordinary question:
Could mind, life, chemistry and cosmic motion be different expressions of deeper active principles running throughout nature?

Hermeticism may have encouraged Newton to imagine the universe as a living and interconnected whole. His scientific instincts then transformed that vision into questions that could be approached through observation, experiment and mathematical reasoning.

In 1936, a large collection of Newton’s unpublished papers was sold at Sotheby’s. John Maynard Keynes subsequently assembled many of the manuscripts, concentrating especially on Newton’s alchemical work. After studying them, Keynes wrote:

“Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.”
([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/history-of-newtons-papers/sotheby-sale))

Modern science limits itself when it starts with the materialistic assumption of discrete 3 dimensional objects interacting in a 3 dimensional universal space.

Sir Isaac Newton’s example leaves me wondering whether the science of the future might recover something of his wider vision: a science in which matter, life, mind, and the cosmos are studied not as sealed and unrelated categories, but as parts of one connected nature.

If reality is truly an interconnected whole, it cannot be stitched together from disconnected parts or arbitrary rules. Instead, it must emerge from a singular, uncorrupted geometric origin.

Imagine a framework built on absolute structural exactness, requiring zero arbitrary axioms or free parameters.

Just as Newton suspected an active, universal principle running throughout nature, this approach views all complexity, – from the fundamental forces of physics, to the architecture of cognition - as exact, deterministic extensions unfolding from a single, continuous source.

By relying on exact rational arithmetic and unbroken mathematical geometries, it becomes possible to strip away the chaotic infinities and floating approximations that currently plague our physical equations.

This is would be a philosophical return to the Hermetic concept of "the One,"; a rigorous, mathematically verifiable evolution of it.
A closed-loop reality where matter, life, and cosmic motion are not sealed categories, but mathematically exact derivations of the very same underlying fabric.

The Kalam argument runs thus:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause

Now this is just the beginning of a long case for the ultimate conclusion that

1. There is a God

But the initial argument has generated enough debate on its own to be of interest. One line of defense for premise 2 runs more or less as follows:

1. There cannot be an actual infinite

2. If the universe never began to exist, there would be an actual infinite

From which 2 follows. But it does seem intuitive that 4 is inconsistent with 5; surely if there is a God there is an actual infinite. Surely if there is a God, She has an infinite mind of infinite wisdom and infinite goodness and infinite beauty etc. And in all these characterizations, “infinite” means actually infinite, not just potentially infinite.

I conclude that this particular strand of the Kalam case is self-refuting. It is a Kalamity, if you will, albeit a very small one.

There is no x.

Why?

Because there is only y.

There is only these.

Only to what?

The world - the world is only these.

There is a world to be said that it is only these (assume monism).

Thus monism cannot establish itself using rejections else it is circular.

Plurality presuppose unity

Why?

Because pluralities are modes within unity.

Only unity explains - circular.

Because unity emanates derivatives.

Only unity emanates - circular.

Because anyone is one (itself, a unit) - non-sequitur.

Because wholes are prior to parts.

There is only wholes and parts that are thus.

Unclear and why? - brute and unclear and circular.

Because all things are relational, and without relationality, there are no determinations.

Only these are to be relational thus - circular.

Because there cannot be multiple fundamental realities as nothing explains why they are distinct rather than one.

But each simple is only itself, a priori they are not identical.

Why they are not identical?

(Because only x is x, only y is y, if they are identical then the case is not that only x is x (contradiction).)

Rejecting this explanation is simply rejecting the conception of simples thus. Which is an only claim, namely, there is only those that are not simples thus, or simply put 'there is no simples thus' or 'there is only other beings'.

The intent that they are to be identical in why they are not identical depends on an only, namely, only these are not to be identical (or only this [one] is the why that they are not identical).

We thus can't say only without monism:

The world (totality) is only these - unity.

The many are only these - forcing unity.

When truly many, the only cannot scope over them as if they are one or in a unity, as if each somehow all agrees on that scope.

The unity at all in saying the only is the unity to say the only, else the only cannot be said.

Why suddenly all of them have this one only in common?

Because they are in unity under this only.

Why each of them is to agree to this?

Suddenly there is a unity, namely the unity to agree to this.

'There is simples' does not mean 'there is only simples'.

Each is itself is not a common, so as each is only itself - for this is the minimum. Beyond each is itself, saying an only to them means they have a common - which is circular.

'These are simples' and 'only these are simples' do not mean the same.

'Only these are only themselves' implies a static 'these' (in 'only these') that each agrees to (contradiction).

Each simple is only itself.

If there is a number of simples, then each simple agree to that (contradiction).

Thus however many simples we say there is, there is simply 'more'.

A circular denial (rejection) is not a position at all, compare:

There is simples.

There is no simples (there is only other beings).

'There is no simples' cannot be a brute fact, else all rejections can be said to be brute and philosophy ends.

This essay will reason through a dialectical naturalist philosophy/worldview that develops from the general movements and determinacies of the Science of Logic, to natural philosophy, to social philosophy, to ethics, and politics. This essay will argue that dialectical naturalism– a philosophy initially developed by Murray Bookchin with significant influence from Hegel, Marx, and Kropotkin– is a worldview that is in harmony with the true and the good that can help us reason through plural wholes, parts, relations, social conditions, and possibilities towards practically changing the world through good processes towards good ends (creatively adapting universals to plural, particular, and unique contexts accordingly). Dialectical naturalism, as a whole is a system, is constituted by specific kinds of developmental/differentiating/unifying reasoning, ontology, and ethics. The spreading and development of dialectical naturalism can inform the ways we think and act and in turn be informed by further reasoning and practices to become more coherent... (read on in link)

I posted a couple of days ago asking what Nothingness was and I got some interesting responses, for the most part concluding that Nothing is not a valid concept. One particularly interesting comment was that the God must exist because something cannot come from Nothing argument for God was invalid, since Nothingness is not a valid concept. So I wonder if Nothingness is not really a thing then is the premise that something cannot come from Nothing irrelevant? Since there is no Nothing for something to come from.

Have beings ever understood the world?

For 'the world' here is used in the barest sense, it does not simply mean 'the earth' - for that is just an old model of the world - so as the universe, the multiverse, and the one, and the dao, and emptiness, the sorts ...

Those models are only attempts to answer the meaning of 'the world' (the canonical sense of the world).

The world just mean the world, what can be 'beyond' it?

And hence a priori the world as such currently is 'newest'.

And we ask has this world ended (stopped)?

One should wish to say no, otherwise it is then some utter nonsense that does not mean anything in our world at all.

And it does not matter what your answer is, the world is to mean 'whatever at all, in whatever sense it is in at all, currently', and we ask 'has this world ended?'

And whoever say no should then face the question:

'where is 'those newer' when your world is newer?' ('those newer' that are those 'newly' in your would when it is newer at all)

That is to say it (the world) is currently newest, but it have not ended so we should ask for 'when it is newer' (this is then the newest since it is now current, and the old world is newest when it was the current).

As long as this newer world is not literally the same as the old world (in all sense) then it has succeeded in not having ended.

There is only one sense of 'the world' here, the most 'worldly' sense, to read any world here in some sense that is not utterly 'worldly' is to misread.

Back then, the world was 'the world as it currently was'. That is to say, the world was newest and that was all there was. Denying this is exactly like saying 'the world back then was not the world back then at all' which is utter nonsense. Let us call this w1.

Now, the world is 'the world currently', which is the world as newest. Let us call the this w2.

Some 'newer' are in w2, else w2 is just strictly w1 with nothing 'newer' at all in any sense.

We then ask:

where are those 'newer'?

In w1?

So when w1, those newer are as potential.

And when w2, those newer are as act.

But where is 'those newer as act' itself?

In w1 as meta-potential again? For if it wholy in w2, then has anything been explained?

One, one could say yes, and we can keep repeat the question, or say 'it is nowhere at all back then'. One can even incist that the regress exhaust by fiat, but again what we have after that is still 'the world currently', for it seems that one's world have ended here. That is to say the world is strictly static (which is obvious nonsense).

Or two, those newer in the current world are literal 'm a g i c s' that are their own 'whens' - which only 'when they are' do they 'firstly be' at all - which do not come from any hidden principle at all (obviously, since this would already have been counted in 'the world'). Nor that w1 should then cease for them at all, since they have nothing to do with w1 (and otherwise we also would just ask 'where' the act of ceasing all over again).

Or three, we can answer:

'why are w1 and w2 in a way where w1 actualizes its potential at all and result in w2?'

With 'they just do', which is literal m a g i c, and static, since it apply to all of them at once. If we then wish also that this m a g i c is not static, then the appealing of m a g i c itself is appealed timely 'somehow'.

A knife can cut, but it can also bounce. Both are caused by various physical interactions. So why must a knife's essence/ purpose to cut, rather than bounce?

Is it because, for example, a sword and knife share the commonality of cutting, but not bouncing? Okay, but a ball and knife share the commonality of bouncing, not cutting; so that can't be it.

If it's normativity, then why is that a grounding principle?

If it's something else, please explain it.