I’m not certain this comment will be coherent, but I would like to compose it before I lose my train of thought. (I’m in an atypical mental state, so I easily could forget the pieces when feeling more normal.) The writing below sounds rather choppy and emphatic, but I’m actually feeling neutral and unconvinced. I wonder if anyone would be able to ‘catch this train’ and steer it somewhere else perhaps..?
It’s an argument for dualism. Here is some background:
I’ve always been a monist: believing that everything should be coherent from within this reality. This is the idea that if things don’t make sense, it is due to limited knowledge and a limited brain, not an incomplete universe. (Where the universe is the physical material world.)
While composing Less Wrong comments, I’ve often thought about what an incomplete universe would look like. (Since this is what dualists claim—what do they mean by something existing differently or beyond material existence?)
I’ve written before that a simulation (a simulation is a reality S that is a subset of something larger) is just as good as (or the same as) “reality” if the simulation is complete within itself. That is, if an agent within the simulation would find that in principle everything within the simulation is coherent and can be understood from within the simulation. Importantly, there is no hint within the simulation of anything existing outside the simulation. (For example, in the multiple worlds theory, if the many worlds don’t interact, each world is its own independent complete reality. The worlds are simulated within a larger entity of all the worlds.)
When physical materialists claim that the physical material world is our entire reality, they are claiming that the physical material world is a reality X, and you cannot deduce anything beyond X from within X. That is, there doesn’t exist anything but X, as far as we’re concerned. (We can speculate about many worlds, but unless the worlds interact, one world cannot deduce the others.) I’ve always found this to be obvious, because if you can deduce anything beyond X from within X, then what you’ve deduced is part of the physical material world (because you deduced it, through interaction) and it’s part of X after all.
(end of background material)
It just occurred to me that we do have evidence that our physical material world X is incomplete. So I’ve stumbled on this argument for dualism. It’s actually a very old one, but approached from a different angle. As I said, I stumbled upon it.
It’s the problem of existence. Being a monist means believing that if things don’t make sense, it is due to limited knowledge and a limited brain. But the problem of existence is such that no amount of knowledge will solve it: there’s nothing we could ever learn (or even believe) within X that would solve this problem. Not a complete understanding of the physics of the beginning of the universe. Not even theism!
I cannot understand what the answer to the problem could possibly be, but I think that I can understand that there is no answer possible within X. So to the extent that I am correct that this problem is not in theory solvable in X means that X is incomplete.
I could be incorrect about whether this problem is in principle unsolvable in X. But I am relatively certain of it, on the same level as having confidence in logic. If I lose confidence in logic, I have nothing to reason with. So for now, I would find it more reasonable to guess that I’m in a simulation of some kind where this particular conundrum is embedded. X is a subset of a larger reality Y where existence is explained.
Given what we know about X, and the problem of existence, what can we deduce about the larger universe Y where existence is explained? Anything? What about deducing anything from the peculiar fact that X is missing information about existence?
I don’t see where dualism comes in. Specifically what kind of dualism are you talking about?
Being a monist means believing that if things don’t make sense, it is due to limited knowledge and a limited brain. But the problem of existence is such that no amount of knowledge will solve it: there’s nothing we could ever learn (or even believe) within X that would solve this problem. … So to the extent that I am correct that this problem is not in theory solvable in X means that X is incomplete.
A problem being unsolvable within some system does not imply that there is some outer system where it can be solved. Take the Halting Problem, for example: there are programs such that we cannot prove whether or not they will never halt, and this itself is provable. Yet there is a right answer in any given instance — a program will halt or it won’t — but we can never know in some cases.
That you say “I cannot understand what the answer to the problem could possibly be” suggests that it is a wrong question. Ask “Why do I think the universe exists?” instead of “Why does the universe exist?”. I have my tentatively preferred answer to that, but maybe you will come up with something interesting.
A problem being unsolvable within some system does not imply that there is some outer system where it can be solved.
Agreed, I was imprecise before. It is not generally ‘a problem’ if something is unknown. In the case of the halting problem, it’s OK if the algorithm doesn’t know when it is going to halt. (This doesn’t make it incomplete.) However, it is a problem if X doesn’t know how X was created (this makes X incomplete.)
The difference is that an algorithm can be implemeted—and fully aware of how it is implemented, and know every line of its own code—without knowing where it is going to halt. Where it’s going to halt isn’t squirreled away in some other domain to be read at the right moment, the rules for halting are known by the algorithm, it just doesn’t know when those rules will be satisfied.
In contrast, X could not have created itself without any source code to do so. The analogous situation would be an algorithm that has halted but doesn’t know why it halted. If it cannot know through self-inspection why it halted, then it is incomplete: it must deduce that something outside itself caused it to halt.
I agree that when a question doesn’t have any possibility of an answer, it’s probably a wrong question. But in this case, I don’t see how it could be a wrong question. It seems like a perfectly reasonable question that we’ve gotten habituated to not having an answer to. It’s evidence—if we were looking for evidence—that X is incomplete and we are in a simulation.
We take a lot of store in the convenient fact that our reality is causal. So why can’t we ask what caused reality?
I have my tentatively preferred answer to that, but maybe you will come up with something interesting.
No, I don’t come up with anything. I feel like anything that a person could possibly come up with would be philosophy (a non-scientific answer outside X). But please do share your answer (even if it is philosophy, as I expect).
(By dualism, I mean that there are aspects of reality we interact with beyond science, so that physical materialism or scientism, etc., would be incomplete epistemologies.)
No, I don’t come up with anything. I feel like anything that a person could possibly come up with would be philosophy (a non-scientific answer outside X). But please do share your answer (even if it is philosophy, as I expect).
Here’s where I stated it most recently, and I wrote an earlier post getting at the same sort of thing (where I see you posted a few comments), but at this point I’ve decided to abstain from actually advocating it until I have a better handle on some of the currently-unanswered questions raised by it. At the same time, I do feel like this line of reasoning (the conclusion I like to sum up as “Existence is what mathematical possibility feels like from the inside”) is a step in the right direction. I do realize now that it is not as complete a solution as I originally thought — it makes me feel less confused about existence, but newly confused about other things — but I do still have the sense that the ultimately correct explanation of existence will not specially privilege this reality over others, and that our mental algorithms regarding “existence” are leading us astray. That seems to be the only state of affairs that does not compel us to believe in an infinite regress of causality, which doesn’t really seem to explain anything, if it even makes logical sense. In any case, although I definitely have to concede that this problem is not solved, I am not convinced that it is not solvable. Metaphysical cosmology has been one of the most difficult areas of philosophy to turn into science or math, but it may yet fall.
(By dualism, I mean that there are aspects of reality we interact with beyond science, so that physical materialism or scientism, etc., would be incomplete epistemologies.)
Alright, that’s what threw me off. I think “dualism” is usually used to refer specifically to theories that postulate ontologically-basic mental substances or properties separate from normal physical interactions; not that “there are aspects of reality we interact with beyond science”, but that our consciousness or minds are made of something beyond science. Your reasoning does not imply the latter, correct?
Oh, that was you. I think the Ultimate Ensemble idea is really appealing as an explanation of what existence is. (The way possibility feels from the inside, as you wrote.)
Ask “Why do I think the universe exists?” instead of “Why does the universe exist?”
My answer to those questions should be the same. The process of answering either question should bring the two into line even if they were previously cached somewhat differently.
By “problem of existence” you mean why we exist and how we came to exist? Why do you think that can’t be answered within our world? And what do you think a world would look like if you could solve the problem in it?
By “problem of existence” you mean why we exist and how we came to exist?
Yes. Why and how anything exists, and what existence is.
Why do you think that can’t be answered within our world?
The reason that I think this problem can’t be answered within our world is that the lack of an answer doesn’t seem to be a matter of lack of information. It’s a unique question in that although it seems to be a reasonable question, there’s no possibility of an answer to this question, not even a false one.
It’s a reasonable question because X is a causal reality, so it is reasonable to ask what caused X. There’s no possibility of an answer to the question because causality is an arrow that always requires a point of departure. If you say the universe was created by a spark, and the rest followed by mathematics and logical necessity, still, what created that spark?
Religions have creation stories, but they explain the creation of X by the creation of X outside X. So creation stories don’t resolve the conundrum of creation, they just move creation to someplace outside experience, where we cannot expect to understand anything. This may represent a universal insight that the existence of X cannot be explained within X.
And what do you think a world would look like if you could solve the problem in it?
This is analogous to being in flatland and wondering about edges. I suppose the main mysterious thing about the larger universe Y would be acausality. Here within X, it seems to be a rule, if not a logical principle, that everything is determined by something else. If something were to happen spontaneously, how did it decide to? What is the rule or pattern for its spontaneous appearance? These are all reasonable questions within X. Somehow Y gets around them.
There’s no possibility of an answer to the question because causality is an arrow that always requires a point of departure.
What do you think of the following answer? There is some evidence that backward time travel may be possible under some circumstances in a way that is compatible with general relativity. So suppose, many years in the future, a team of physicists and engineers creates a wormhole in the universe and sends something back to the time of the Big Bang, causing it and creating our universe. That way, it’s all self-contained.
Self-contained is good, though it doesn’t resolve the existence problem. (What is the appropriate cliché there … you can’t pull yourself out of quicksand by pulling on your boots?)
Backward time travel itself opens up a number of wonderful possibilities, including universe self-reflection and the possibility of a post-hoc framework of objective value.
Backward time travel itself opens up a number of wonderful possibilities, including universe self-reflection and the possibility of a post-hoc framework of objective value.
I’m not certain this comment will be coherent, but I would like to compose it before I lose my train of thought. (I’m in an atypical mental state, so I easily could forget the pieces when feeling more normal.) The writing below sounds rather choppy and emphatic, but I’m actually feeling neutral and unconvinced. I wonder if anyone would be able to ‘catch this train’ and steer it somewhere else perhaps..?
It’s an argument for dualism. Here is some background:
I’ve always been a monist: believing that everything should be coherent from within this reality. This is the idea that if things don’t make sense, it is due to limited knowledge and a limited brain, not an incomplete universe. (Where the universe is the physical material world.)
While composing Less Wrong comments, I’ve often thought about what an incomplete universe would look like. (Since this is what dualists claim—what do they mean by something existing differently or beyond material existence?)
I’ve written before that a simulation (a simulation is a reality S that is a subset of something larger) is just as good as (or the same as) “reality” if the simulation is complete within itself. That is, if an agent within the simulation would find that in principle everything within the simulation is coherent and can be understood from within the simulation. Importantly, there is no hint within the simulation of anything existing outside the simulation. (For example, in the multiple worlds theory, if the many worlds don’t interact, each world is its own independent complete reality. The worlds are simulated within a larger entity of all the worlds.)
When physical materialists claim that the physical material world is our entire reality, they are claiming that the physical material world is a reality X, and you cannot deduce anything beyond X from within X. That is, there doesn’t exist anything but X, as far as we’re concerned. (We can speculate about many worlds, but unless the worlds interact, one world cannot deduce the others.) I’ve always found this to be obvious, because if you can deduce anything beyond X from within X, then what you’ve deduced is part of the physical material world (because you deduced it, through interaction) and it’s part of X after all.
(end of background material)
It just occurred to me that we do have evidence that our physical material world X is incomplete. So I’ve stumbled on this argument for dualism. It’s actually a very old one, but approached from a different angle. As I said, I stumbled upon it.
It’s the problem of existence. Being a monist means believing that if things don’t make sense, it is due to limited knowledge and a limited brain. But the problem of existence is such that no amount of knowledge will solve it: there’s nothing we could ever learn (or even believe) within X that would solve this problem. Not a complete understanding of the physics of the beginning of the universe. Not even theism!
I cannot understand what the answer to the problem could possibly be, but I think that I can understand that there is no answer possible within X. So to the extent that I am correct that this problem is not in theory solvable in X means that X is incomplete.
I could be incorrect about whether this problem is in principle unsolvable in X. But I am relatively certain of it, on the same level as having confidence in logic. If I lose confidence in logic, I have nothing to reason with. So for now, I would find it more reasonable to guess that I’m in a simulation of some kind where this particular conundrum is embedded. X is a subset of a larger reality Y where existence is explained.
Given what we know about X, and the problem of existence, what can we deduce about the larger universe Y where existence is explained? Anything? What about deducing anything from the peculiar fact that X is missing information about existence?
I don’t see where dualism comes in. Specifically what kind of dualism are you talking about?
A problem being unsolvable within some system does not imply that there is some outer system where it can be solved. Take the Halting Problem, for example: there are programs such that we cannot prove whether or not they will never halt, and this itself is provable. Yet there is a right answer in any given instance — a program will halt or it won’t — but we can never know in some cases.
That you say “I cannot understand what the answer to the problem could possibly be” suggests that it is a wrong question. Ask “Why do I think the universe exists?” instead of “Why does the universe exist?”. I have my tentatively preferred answer to that, but maybe you will come up with something interesting.
What is it?
Agreed, I was imprecise before. It is not generally ‘a problem’ if something is unknown. In the case of the halting problem, it’s OK if the algorithm doesn’t know when it is going to halt. (This doesn’t make it incomplete.) However, it is a problem if X doesn’t know how X was created (this makes X incomplete.)
The difference is that an algorithm can be implemeted—and fully aware of how it is implemented, and know every line of its own code—without knowing where it is going to halt. Where it’s going to halt isn’t squirreled away in some other domain to be read at the right moment, the rules for halting are known by the algorithm, it just doesn’t know when those rules will be satisfied.
In contrast, X could not have created itself without any source code to do so. The analogous situation would be an algorithm that has halted but doesn’t know why it halted. If it cannot know through self-inspection why it halted, then it is incomplete: it must deduce that something outside itself caused it to halt.
I agree that when a question doesn’t have any possibility of an answer, it’s probably a wrong question. But in this case, I don’t see how it could be a wrong question. It seems like a perfectly reasonable question that we’ve gotten habituated to not having an answer to. It’s evidence—if we were looking for evidence—that X is incomplete and we are in a simulation.
We take a lot of store in the convenient fact that our reality is causal. So why can’t we ask what caused reality?
No, I don’t come up with anything. I feel like anything that a person could possibly come up with would be philosophy (a non-scientific answer outside X). But please do share your answer (even if it is philosophy, as I expect).
(By dualism, I mean that there are aspects of reality we interact with beyond science, so that physical materialism or scientism, etc., would be incomplete epistemologies.)
Here’s where I stated it most recently, and I wrote an earlier post getting at the same sort of thing (where I see you posted a few comments), but at this point I’ve decided to abstain from actually advocating it until I have a better handle on some of the currently-unanswered questions raised by it. At the same time, I do feel like this line of reasoning (the conclusion I like to sum up as “Existence is what mathematical possibility feels like from the inside”) is a step in the right direction. I do realize now that it is not as complete a solution as I originally thought — it makes me feel less confused about existence, but newly confused about other things — but I do still have the sense that the ultimately correct explanation of existence will not specially privilege this reality over others, and that our mental algorithms regarding “existence” are leading us astray. That seems to be the only state of affairs that does not compel us to believe in an infinite regress of causality, which doesn’t really seem to explain anything, if it even makes logical sense. In any case, although I definitely have to concede that this problem is not solved, I am not convinced that it is not solvable. Metaphysical cosmology has been one of the most difficult areas of philosophy to turn into science or math, but it may yet fall.
Alright, that’s what threw me off. I think “dualism” is usually used to refer specifically to theories that postulate ontologically-basic mental substances or properties separate from normal physical interactions; not that “there are aspects of reality we interact with beyond science”, but that our consciousness or minds are made of something beyond science. Your reasoning does not imply the latter, correct?
Oh, that was you. I think the Ultimate Ensemble idea is really appealing as an explanation of what existence is. (The way possibility feels from the inside, as you wrote.)
My answer to those questions should be the same. The process of answering either question should bring the two into line even if they were previously cached somewhat differently.
By “problem of existence” you mean why we exist and how we came to exist? Why do you think that can’t be answered within our world? And what do you think a world would look like if you could solve the problem in it?
Yes. Why and how anything exists, and what existence is.
The reason that I think this problem can’t be answered within our world is that the lack of an answer doesn’t seem to be a matter of lack of information. It’s a unique question in that although it seems to be a reasonable question, there’s no possibility of an answer to this question, not even a false one.
It’s a reasonable question because X is a causal reality, so it is reasonable to ask what caused X. There’s no possibility of an answer to the question because causality is an arrow that always requires a point of departure. If you say the universe was created by a spark, and the rest followed by mathematics and logical necessity, still, what created that spark?
Religions have creation stories, but they explain the creation of X by the creation of X outside X. So creation stories don’t resolve the conundrum of creation, they just move creation to someplace outside experience, where we cannot expect to understand anything. This may represent a universal insight that the existence of X cannot be explained within X.
This is analogous to being in flatland and wondering about edges. I suppose the main mysterious thing about the larger universe Y would be acausality. Here within X, it seems to be a rule, if not a logical principle, that everything is determined by something else. If something were to happen spontaneously, how did it decide to? What is the rule or pattern for its spontaneous appearance? These are all reasonable questions within X. Somehow Y gets around them.
What do you think of the following answer? There is some evidence that backward time travel may be possible under some circumstances in a way that is compatible with general relativity. So suppose, many years in the future, a team of physicists and engineers creates a wormhole in the universe and sends something back to the time of the Big Bang, causing it and creating our universe. That way, it’s all self-contained.
Self-contained is good, though it doesn’t resolve the existence problem. (What is the appropriate cliché there … you can’t pull yourself out of quicksand by pulling on your boots?)
Backward time travel itself opens up a number of wonderful possibilities, including universe self-reflection and the possibility of a post-hoc framework of objective value.
It also makes encryption more difficult!