TPF : Why was there a big bang

[Gnomon]

He was pointing out how this way of speaking retains a transcendental framing that doesn’t make causal sense. — apokrisis

In the first paragraph of Tallis' article, entitled “The Laws of Nature”, he says : “. . . to apply that knowledge {about states of matter] outside of the laboratories in support of our agency [free will], are perhaps the most striking expressions of the way in which humans transcend the material world”. He doesn't specifically address the question of “causal sense”. But he seems to be in favor of “transcendental framing” of the FreeWill question, which he has addressed in previous articles and books. In which he concludes that "freewill is not an illusion", i.e not "woo". His framing of the freewill question seems to me to be inherently transcendental.

Transcendental Freedom :
What is more, the Existential Intuition opens up the sense of transcendent objects that are, by analogy with the embodied self, more than what the self experiences of them. ___Tallis
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicat ... ly-be-free

The start would be the least habitual possible state of being. — apokrisis

So, you agree that the ultimate source of “habitual” [regular, reliable] behaviors, rather than acquired in the process of evolution, could be inferred as laws of nature [necessities] that predate the Bang. By that I mean, if-then instructions for system operation that were programmed into the seed (Singularity) of the Big Bang?

You mean, the future is the Heat Death? Well, duh. — apokrisis

That “duh, everybody knows about heat death” conclusion came as a surprise to Einstein, who assumed a stable and eternal universe in his calculations. And only when faced with contrary evidence, was forced to rename his Cosmological Constant as what we now know as Dark Energy.

But you can only argue this way by rejecting the alternative that Tallis writes about. . . . Have you simply misunderstood Tallis here? You are taking the view he critiques. — apokrisis

The alternative you refer to may be where he looks at an alternative to the notion of mandated laws, “the laws of nature do not shape what happens but are simply the shape of what happens" (e.g. a river formed by accidents). To me, that “explanation” is what he is arguing against -- saying “they come to look less like explanations than descriptions". In other words, describing the effect is not the same as explaining the cause.

You are quite right that many physicists just talk about the laws of nature as if they were written in the mind of God. . . . .I agree they are dealing in woo to the extent they remain mired in such an ontology. — apokrisis

I suspect that those physicists, such as Isaac Newton, who called the necessities of nature “laws”, would not agree with your label of “woo”, for anything that does not comport with your own ontology. They were not being “anti-realist”, but describing reality in terms that everyone could understand. Those who prefer to call those dependable regularities “habits” are implying that they could have been otherwise. But how would they know that, except by re-running the program of evolution several times to see if each execution followed the same basic path. All we know for sure is that Nature seems to be constrained by built-in limitations. So, if you imagine a reality with different constraints you will be dealing with imaginary “woo”, rather than with Reality as we know it.

[Gnomon]

Of course, the entire question also seems to presuppose some sort of "God's Eye View" through which all truth corresponds to facts of being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Those scientists, who address the question of "something from nothing", necessarily assume an omniscient view of eternal existence prior to the Big Bang. For example, a Multiverse, of which our 'verse is merely one of zillions, is necessarily eternal, in order to escape the question of "how do you account for something new and without precedence?" In the multiverse model, a Creator (from scratch) is not necessary. because what you see now, is what has always existed in one form or another. But then, who created the Multiverse, or was it self-created? That eternal power to create new worlds is uncannily god-like. :joke:

[Gnomon]

He means that life and mind transcend their worlds by being organisms with an intentional point of view. — apokrisis

Was that transcendent "intentional" perspective inevitable : due to an accidental structure of the Singularity, or to an intentional arrangement of its structure? Is Life-Mind-Intention a product of combining matter with physical laws? If so, which? And in what proportions?

Nope. The structuralist view is just arguing that the regularities of nature are immanent rather than transcendent. They emerge from the chaos of possibility as structural inevitabilities, rather than being God-given laws that animate matter. — apokrisis

Well, duh! The structural regularities of our universe are necessarily immanent in the structure of the system. But how the system arrived at that highly-unlikely anthropic structure is an open question. Apparently. by "chaos of possibility" you mean that a human-friendly universe is an astronomical accident. That would be a Weak Anthropic argument. And the Las Vegas odds, of such a cosmic-coincidence-of-initial-conditions occurring in finite time (in eternity anything possible must happen), are a bad bet. Therefore, the theory of Inflation was proposed to cover the bet in a fraction of a Planck second. But, if you believe in such Voila!-instant-universe-from-nothing Magic, I have some prime real estate in Afghanistan to sell you. :joke:

What Are The Odds? :
If modern physics is to be believed, we shouldn’t be here. The meager dose of energy infusing empty space, which at higher levels would rip the cosmos apart, is a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times tinier than theory predicts.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-mult ... -20141103/

The contest here is between two ways of looking at the metaphysics of Being - the transcendent and the immanent. And it is not even a contest. — apokrisis

I agree. To assume that Life & MInd & Intention & Love emerged from "the chaos of possibilities" is believable, only if that infinite Chaos was limited & enformed by the logical structure of Cosmos. Therefore, the infinite potential of Chaos and the finite structure of Cosmos logically must exist prior to the actualization of potential and the realization of Cosmos in the Big Bang. And that priority is what I would call "Transcendent", in that neither Infinity nor cosmic potential can be found immanent in the actual universe we inhabit. So, Transcendence wins by a mile. Yet, it is still Structuralism.

Chaos :
In ancient Greek creation myths Chaos was the void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos. It literally means "emptiness", but can also refer to a random undefined unformed state that was changed into the orderly law-defined enformed Cosmos. In modern Cosmology, Chaos can represent the undefined state from which the Big Bang defined (created) space/time.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page12.html

[Gnomon]

Why would the Big Daddy in the Sky go to all the trouble of pre-arranging an anthropically structured Big Bang that takes 13 billion years to eventually deliver the fleeting blip of a biofilm on some random chunk of real estate? — apokrisis

I don't know why an intentional universe creator would bother to instigate a messy world like ours. But I have a theory, based on my Enformationism worldview. It's obvious to me that the mythical creator of the idyllic Garden of Eden is a fairy tale. Other ancient creation myths included the imperfect workman Demiurge of Plato, or the Gnostic's evil god Ialdabaoth. Those gods were not Omnipotent or Omni-benign, and their creative deficiencies are reflected in the imperfect world we inhabit today.

So, anyone postulating a non-accidental creation event must confront the Problem of Evil. And the only resolution I can think of is to assume that the omnipotent Creator has the potential for both Good and Evil. That's the kernel of my BothAnd principle : the real world has both good & bad properties, from the human perspective, so any explanation for the world's existence must resolve that innate contradiction. And just blaming it on random accidents is not explanatory.

Therefore, instead of a loving "Big Daddy", I envision a General Creative Principle that is more like abstract Mathematics than flesh & blood Mankind. Math includes both positive and negative values. So, the entity I call "The Enformer" or "G*D", is an update of Plato's LOGOS, but also includes the principles of Ethos and Pathos. Since Reason, Character, and Emotion are characteristics of our world, specifically the Cultural aspects instead of the Natural properties, the First Cause must have possessed the Aristotelian Potential for those same qualities.

In keeping with the theme of Enformationism, the hypothetical Enformer, was essentially a Programmer, not a Magician. By that I mean S/he initiated an evolving process, instead of merely saying the magic words : "let there be light', and presto! a perfect world appears. As a result of programming a Singularity with design parameters (laws & initial conditions), a prolonged process of Evolution began, and will have an end. The End will be the output of the program. And, due to the inherent randomizing uncertainties, presumably even the Programmer does not know exactly what the Final Answer will be ( maybe 42). Evolutionary Programming is inherently uncertain, but by a process of trial & error, it gradually optimizes itself, by means of looping feedback (mutations & selection).

I won't go into the details of the Enforming hypothesis here, but you can simply think of it as a 21st century Myth, or as Science Fiction, if you like. But remember, that all other explanatory alternatives (Inflation, Multiverse, etc) are likewise fictional projections from what's known, into the unknown territory beyond the boundaries of space-time. So, my story can only be judged by its philosophical explanatory power, not by its empirical evidence.


G*D :
* An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a creator deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D. This eternal deity is not imagined in a physical human body, but in a meta-physical mathematical form, equivalent to Logos. Other names : ALL, BEING, Creator, Enformer, MIND, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. The eternal Whole, of which all temporal things are a part, is not to be feared or worshiped, but appreciated like Nature.
* I refer to the logically necessary and philosophically essential First & Final Cause as G*D, rather than merely "X" the Unknown, partly out of respect. That’s because the ancients were not stupid, to infer purposeful agencies, but merely shooting in the dark. We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why". That inscrutable agent of Entention is what I mean by G*D.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

Demiurge : a god is a deity while demiurge is something (as an institution, idea, or individual) conceived as an autonomous creative force or decisive power.
Note -- the Demiurge functions like a computer program, which obeys the instructions of its programmer as it carries-out an assigned task. In my story, the program works-out a "what-if" question, based on certain parameters. But, if the programmer knew the answer in advance, the program wouldn't be necessary. Yet, there are non-factual philosophical questions that can only be answered in practice, not theory.

[Gnomon]

To talk of "good and bad" is way too simplistic - a dualism that wants to be reduced to a monism. . . . Your argument falls apart before it gets started if it is couched in merely anti-symmetric terms like positive-negative and good-bad. — apokrisis

I don't emphasize the "good and bad", because my philosophy is BothAnd. It acknowledges the Duality of Reality, but "reduces" to a Monism in Holism.

Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Note -- there's lots more at the link


But you are taking things back to a simplistic religious framing that just accepts there is a problem of evil, or a problem if a creator isn't the determiner of every detail. — apokrisis

No, I don't believe the Creator is the "determiner of every detail". Instead, the Programmer created an evolutionary program that works out the details via trial & error, not magical intervention.

Evolutionary Programming :
Special computer algorithms inspired by biological Natural Selection. It is similar to Genetic Programming in that it relies on internal competition between random alternative solutions to weed-out inferior results, and to pass-on superior answers to the next generation of algorithms. By means of such optimizing feedback loops, evolution is able to make progress toward the best possible solution – limited only by local restraints – to the original programmer’s goal or purpose. In Enformationism theory the Prime Programmer is portrayed as a creative deity, who uses bottom-up mechanisms, rather than top-down miracles, to produce a world with both freedom & determinism, order & meaning.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

But talking of a programmer immediately makes chance a big metaphysyical problem. Computers are deterministic devices. Chance doesn't even enter the story. And to claim some "swerve" to introduce uncertainty is a patent act of desperation. — apokrisis

You have missed the whole point of the Enformationism worldview. An Evolutionary Program is not "deterministic", but it is teleological, in that there is an Intention (goal) that drives the Selection of the fittest. No "desperation: needed, just a modicum of Reason.

But what we see is that most folk get stuck at the first step - a symmetry breaking that only speaks of two directions at the one scale of being. — apokrisis

A symmetry break does indeed begin with a duality, as in the mitosis of a cell : one becomes two. But that's just the first step. For example, a single stem cell has the potential to evolve into a variety of functional cells. The antique notion of a "swerve" was just an attempt to explain how a linear process could become non-linear. For example light always travels in a straight line --- until it encounters curved space, that is.

If light bends/deflects due to gravity, then why do we say that light travels in a straight line? :
https://www.quora.com/If-light-bends-de ... aight-line

So your story predicts neither what physics has figured out about the start of the Universe, nor what sociology has figured out about the organisation of biological collectives. — apokrisis

I'm sorry. But you won't have a clue what my "story" predicts, until you have heard the whole story. The Enformationism website is just the first chapter. The rest of the story is told in an ongoing series of blogs. I think you are confusing my 21st century creation myth with the traditional stories of creation, that are steeped in Magic instead of Science.

Enformationism : http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/

Ultimate Enforming Principle : http://bothandblog5.enformationism.info/page24.html


Productive metaphysics instead continues on from this kind of "dualism yearning to be monism" to a fully-broken dichotomy - one with the asymmetry of a hierarchical or triadically-developed scale. The division has to be complementary - mutually exclusive/jointly exhaustive - so that all its causes are to be found within it. No need for transcendence. — apokrisis

In the Enformationism worldview, the Big Bang "division" was also "complementary" (BothAnd). The only "transcendence" is in the sense that a Programmer transcends the Program. You might say that the metaphysical Intention (Will) of the Programmer is embodied in the physical expression of the evolutionary program. To wit : Mental Information (Idea, Form, Concept), is transformed into Causal EnFormAction (Energy), which then transforms into the physical expression of the original concept (Matter, Sculpture). Just as a pool shooter is not on the table, only the First Cause transcends the Effect : an evolving chain of Causation. Can your "triadic" scale explain the Big Bang without reference to some prior Agency? Could our finite evolving universe be it's own Cause?

PS__An eternal circular process has all its "causes within it". But it's going nowhere. By contrast, a linear one-way process, from hot Big Bang to cold Big Sigh (heat death), must have an origin, a First Cause, a Prime Mover -- a Reason for Being.