BothAndBlog Forum

What if the big bang singularity is not the "beginning" of existence?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/847615

So where is the singularity? When is the singularity? If it is not in any specific location nor at any specific time, how can we say it "precedes" the big bang or "began" the universe. In what dimension would the singularity exist. Does it still exist? — Benj96

You are noting the limitations of materialistic traditional conventional language, for expressing immaterial novel unconventional conjectures of philosophy. In materialistic physics, everything is immanent, in time, in space. But in speculative philosophy, our minds are free to explore transcendent dimensions, such as the "time before Time".

PS___The speculative mathematics of String Theory found 10 or 11 dimensions to be necessary for their numbers to add-up. As ideal figments of Logic, it didn't matter "when" or "where" those dimensions were located in the "real" world. When & where does Mathematics exist?
PPS___For my own musings, I imagine the Singularity (associated with Big Bang) not as a space-time object, but as the mathematical definition (e.g. program) of a Potential (not yet actual) universe. This is a philosophical conjecture, not a scientific theory. It "still exists", as a general concept, whenever someone thinks of the Source or Cause of the Cosmic Bang that created the space-time we know and love.
a day ago

Well, in math a singularity is roughly where a function goes haywire, but your interpretation is interesting. — jgill

I am familiar with the mathematical definition. But some Futurists have borrowed the term for other applications, such as a technological Singularity where human tech "goes haywire", and may begin to dominate its creators.

As an Originist though, I was referring to the speculative non-mathematical philosophical notion of the Big Bang Singularity, as a creation event, to explain how Space-Time mysteriously emerged from Infinity-Eternity. Yet, a somewhat less inscrutable way to look at the inexplicable emergence of something-from-nothingness is to imagine a more familiar scenario.

For example, picture the Mathematical Singularity as a simple Algorithm, serving as the kernel of a program for creating a Cosmos via computational evolution. Energy/Causation was provided by the teleological Intention (goal, output) of the program, and Matter was defined numerically in the initial setup. In this story, the physical world is the computer which processes simple mathematical (and-or-not) functions into a recursive process of addition, subtraction, and multiplication of bits into bytes and gazillobytes of complex information, and of physical forms.

It's just a conjecture, but I find it interesting as an alternative to other pre-bang fantasies, such as Many Worlds, and Multiverses.

Where was matter before the big bang?
The initial singularity is a singularity predicted by some models of the Big Bang theory to have existed before the Big Bang and thought to have contained all the energy and spacetime of the Universe.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/quest ... e-big-bang

Physical Relationships among Matter, Energy and Information :
The three concepts – matter, energy and information – are related through scientific laws. Matter and energy relations are more thoroughly understood than relations involving information. At the level of data or signal “difference” is suggested as a more elementary term than “information.”
https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.gwu ... brsfmf.pdf


↪Joshs
Philosophy as physics without the maths. — Banno

On an opinion-swapping Philosophy Forum, when amateur philosophers pretend to pontificate on material Physics, they are doing Science without the Matter, and Math without the Numbers.

I would never weigh in on the content of empirical assertions by physicists and characterize my opinions as philosophical. I can only claim a philosophical stance when I remain neutral in this regard, that is, when I am careful not to offer any opinion on the veracity of facts generated within physics, and instead focus on the pre-empirical presuppositions grounding the way questions are posed in physics. — Joshs

That sounds like a reasonable philosophical approach to physical controversies. But some TPF posters challenge philosophical conjectures by insisting on verified empirical evidence. However, such hypotheses may presuppose later empirical evidence. For example, bending of light by gravity was a rational conclusion from Einstein's mathematical theory of gravitation, pending future astronomical confirmation.

Besides, "pre-empirical presuppositions" in mathematics are called "axioms" : presumed to be logically true until proven wrong by finding a black swan. Perhaps speculative philosophy has more in common with Platonic mathematics than with Pragmatic physics.


Axiom :
In formal mathematics an axiom is a formula or schema of formulas that is stipulated as true (and therefore not requiring proof). Axioms are the counterpart in mathematics of suppositions, assumptions, or premises in ordinary syllogistic logic.
https://platonicrealms.com/encyclopedia/axiom

I would never weigh in on the content of empirical assertions by physicists and characterize my opinions as philosophical. I can only claim a philosophical stance when I remain neutral in this regard, that is, when I am careful not to offer any opinion on the veracity of facts generated within physics, and instead focus on the pre-empirical presuppositions grounding the way questions are posed in physics. — Joshs

That sounds like a reasonable philosophical approach to physical controversies. But some TPF posters challenge philosophical conjectures by insisting on verified empirical evidence. However, such hypotheses may presuppose later empirical evidence. For example, bending of light by gravity was a rational conclusion from Einstein's mathematical theory of gravitation, pending future astronomical confirmation.

Besides, "pre-empirical presuppositions" in mathematics are called "axioms" : presumed to be logically true until proven wrong by finding a black swan. Perhaps speculative philosophy has more in common with Platonic mathematics than with Pragmatic physics.


Axiom :
In formal mathematics an axiom is a formula or schema of formulas that is stipulated as true (and therefore not requiring proof). Axioms are the counterpart in mathematics of suppositions, assumptions, or premises in ordinary syllogistic logic.
https://platonicrealms.com/encyclopedia/axiom

Some years ago, when Lawrence Krauss published A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing those who are well versed in both philosophy and physics were highly critical. They pointed out that his "nothing" was not nothing. Despite the title what he described is a universe from something, — Fooloso4

Yes. I take his potent & creative nothingness argument as supportive of my own interpretation of BB theory : that Causal Energy and Limiting Laws necessarily pre-existed the Bang --- not physically, but Platonically.

Non-empirical Philosophical conjectures, such as Multiverse and Many Worlds, also seem to assume that "something" preceded the beginning of our little space-time bubble. However, they imply that the "something" was simply more-of-the-same in a tower-of-turtles all the way down to an eternal Material Motherlode. Ironically, in our part of the ontic bubble, ever-changing matter seems to be anything but eternal. So, a more likely candidate for everlasting existence may be Platonic Logic or Tegmark's Mathematics.