Metaphysics in a Nutshell

how to understand everything

This philosophy (a coherent set of answers to a set of philosophical questions) aka Truth Wisdom (as opposed to Practical Wisdom or Academic Philosophy), encompasses meta-philosophy, ontology, mereology, metaphysics (which is ~50 "What is the nature of.." questions), proto-physics (the metaphysics of time, space, etc.), meta-epistemology (the nature of truth and knowledge, etc.), and meta-ethics.

This philosophy can meet these criteria:

a) cohesive, coherent, conclusive

b) expressible in ordinary language (It selects from the most necessary and sufficient colloquial where possible.)

c) compatible with scientific consensus (in-so-far as there is one)

d) no gaps, special pleading, appeal to authority, or woo

This is a contingent set. IF you accept this set of answers THEN all other answers can be found by logical extension. This is the metaphorical/metaphysical ToE that encompasses the physical one.

The categories are rough and subject to refinement.

1) AMALGUM

consciousness

love

religion

2) ETHICS

evil

meaning

morality

politics

3) EPISTEMOLOGY (meta, as opposed to practical (logic, statistics, game theory, Bayesian reasoning, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies))

emergence

intelligence

knowledge

logic

math

paradox

science

The Truth

Why

4) PHYSICAL (proto-physics)

causality

change

energy

life

matter

ontology

reality

space

things

time

5) SPIRIT (of the patterns in the mind, no woo)

cognition

death

everything

"free" will

repetition

self

sentience

Thing

6) TRANSCENDENT (beyond the perception of a mind)

certainty

god

infinity

nothing

perfection

1) AMALGUM

•Consciousness - There is no consensus definition or understanding of consciousness but it can be used more or less synonymously with individuation, self, ego, perspective, being, and awareness.

Mind is a metaphor for the psychological patterns in the brain. The conscious mind is the part that is available for introspection, and consciousness is the momentary experience and/or the continuity of that experience within those accessible parts.

Anthropologically, consciousness is a feedback loop in our theory of mind.

Neuroscientifically, it is still in the Platonic stage of development - working out the vocabulary and mereology. It's to do with suppression of the default mode network, possibly the basal ganglia, and (probably) Cognitive Workplace Theory.

Phenomenologically, consciousness is an awareness fairy.

•Love - Love contains aspects of endocrinology, personality, society, culture, psychology, biology...

•Religion - Religion is a complex blend of culture, history, tradition, and beliefs.

The common thread of all religions is dogma - an instance of faith (unjustified belief).

Most religions accept one or more gods. All versions of god (which are a person or a force) include logically impossible, mutually exclusive, or otherwise untestable attributes and are therefore indistinguishable from fiction, and Ought to be treated accordingly.

2) ETHICS is a formalized version of morality, usually in a group context, especially professional.

There are three primary schools of thought about ethics which are each insufficient;

Deontology/duty ethics is an abdication of morality and can only be meaningful Within a specific context. It assumes the validity of the system.

Consequentialism does not account for intent and requires an impossible moral calculus.

Virtue ethics does not account for consequences. It provides positive pressure but not guidance on how to behave.

What is needed is an Ethic of Priorities to govern all ethical concerns.

•Evil is about intents, not effects.

It is simple to show that evil actions may produce good effects and vice versa. Therefore, effects and intents must be distinguished from one another.

For an act to be evil it must be intentional or intentionally negligent.

•Meaning is salience, perspective, and priority. Like justice it can only be individual and bespoke

Meaning is of two kinds, avoid and approach, in that order of priority.

The meaning of life is that everyone must choose the answer to that question for themselves. No one can write your story for you.

To the extent your priorities are explicit, all life problems may be resolved.

Universal or group meaning is impossible except;

Ethical truths are so to the extent people share priorities;

-Survival is a prerequisite for all meaningful goals.

-Truth is a prerequisite for all non-arbitrary goals.

-Sustainability is a prerequisite for all non-temporary goals.

-Reciprocity is a prerequisite for civilization.

•Morality is personal best practices, a less formal version of ethics.

•Politics is ethics + scale.

3) EPISTEMOLOGY

•Emergence means a new metaphor for a higher level of understanding.

Water molecules acting together create the emergent property of wetness.

Emergence = relationship. Whenever two things interact, the complexity of that interaction spreads outward, creating effects that can seem "more than the sum of its parts". When those relationship attributes are sufficiently large, distinctive, and useful, we give them a new name.

•Intelligence is complex/abstract pattern recognition and manipulation. There is no technically correct definition of intelligence. Many different definitions exist and are largely compatible.

IQ tests measure the statistical center of all aspects of cognitive functioning. That is, what's most centrally useful in all situations. They are generally accurate and effective and typically unbiased.

•Knowledge is justified belief, the opposite of faith.

"Justified true belief" refers to a hypothetical ultimate validation of Truth and is therefore pragmatically useless.

The justification for belief is always and only sufficiency for a specific use, because there is no reason to proceed beyond that level of certainty.

The purpose of all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding is actionable certainty.

•Logic is a sub-set of science (rigor) - relationships that always replicate.

•Math is a sub-set of logic (relationships that always replicate) that deals exclusively with relationships of quantity.

Quantity is recursive boundary conditions; to the extent you can divide something into equal parts, you can do math on it.

•Paradox only exists in language, never in reality.

Languages are descriptive.

-"This sentence is a lie." does not describe anything in reality so it is not meaningful.

-To create a rock so big you can't move it.. does not describe anything in reality.

-A set that contains itself, does not describe anything in reality.

-Victimless crime, does not describe anything in reality.

-To be able to subdivide something indefinitely (Zeno) does not describe reality.

•Proof is evidence sufficient to convince a rational skeptic.

•Science is rigor, or the method of being rigorous, or the body of knowledge thereby achieved (or the culture that accretes around them).

You can know this to be true because starting with only the first three words, one could recreate everything else.

The ultimate grounding of science is replication - to the extent our measuring sticks are stable, we can discern patterns within those relationships.

•The Truth is the body of knowledge that continuously replicates. A truth is an instance of truth - a fact or perspective.

If it keeps being the same way every time you check it, it's true for all intents and purposes.

The validation of Truth rests in that replication. The more stable it is, the more true it is. This applies both to physical measurements and to the relationships of logic.

•Why questions are of two kinds;

a) How?

which is a scientific question, not a philosophical one

b)! From what intent/to what end?

which requires a pre-existing mind

4) Physical

•Causality is just another way to say "the arrow of change".

That change happens to occur certain ways rather than others is what science exists to index.

Causality is infinite in all directions, at all scales, forever. When anything moves an inch to the right, everything else in the universe moves an inch to the left (on average). Think of infinite marbles in an infinite fishbowl.

•Change - Actuality is the universe as it is outside the perception of a mind; change qua change. It is aka chaos, aether. The mathematical formula that describes it is [ )Δ^∞( ], that is - change over time [ Δ ], infinite in all directions and scales, forever [ ^∞ ], outside the comprehension of a mind [ )x( ]..

-Reality is a limited sub-set of Actuality that changes within the scale and time that we perceive and interact with.

All Things change, each according to its properties, just as people all change according to their priorities.

The slower things change, the more stable they are, which gives us actionable certainty about them. That which changes most slowly is most real for all intents and purposes. "Realizing" something is manifesting it - making it more stable, more real.

•Energy is change that occurs cyclically. Aether/change (whatever is sub-quantum) which overlaps sufficiently strongly and persistently becomes waves, just as waves of energy in certain frequencies become entangled into matter. All waves, and therefore all energy propagates through a medium, which is currently understood as quantum as it was understood as particles and molecules and substances before that. Physics currently can probe deeper only by logical extrapolation until we increase the resolution of our instrumnts.

The total amount of energy in the universe never changes but the total amount of energy in any given subsystem constantly changes

•Life is understood at many levels and which one is appropriate is determined by which level of emergence is relevant. Life as various biological terms has specific technical definitions.

In general, life is the emergent attribute of biological complexity.

As long as it can maintain its homeostasis it adapts and expands to use all available resources.

•Matter is high-entropy, entangled energy. Think of it as an eddy in a river. For a time it stabilizes and forms a coherent pattern at a higher level of analysis (ie. emergence). The more stable that pattern is, the more solid the matter.

•Ontology is "What is the nature of being?"

Actuality is undifferentiated stuff. Reality is an experienced sub-set of Actuality.

A Thing is a pattern in a mind; a set of attributes and boundary conditions by which it is distinguished from other things in relation to anticipated uses or interactions.

All things have an unique position in space, time, and scale and we are an embodied perspective on reality.

All things have a physical correlate as a pattern in a mind but not all of those patterns have an external referent and not all that refer to something do so accurately.

•Reality is the experienced sub-set of Actuality, which is the universe beyond the perception of a mind.

Reality is of two levels:

Reality-to-us is a filtered sub-set of reality. The filters are:

-physical/biological, your senses

-cultural/subconscious, things you learned or experienced very early in life

-Self - psychological/personality/character, the story you tell yourself about how you fit into the world and society

"Reality" is consensus experience; that which continuously replicates. Whatever keeps being the same is the most real. It is equivalent to Truth.

•Space is the correlation of our internal (proprioceptive) and external senses.

Our internal sense is our embodiment.

The external senses are experiences Of; that which we do not have direct access to or control over.

There are three physical dimensions, time, space, and scale. The three spacial dimensions are a relative coordinate system.

•Things are a pattern in a mind. Mind is a metaphor for the patterns in the brain.

Some things have an external referent and some have an external correlate. That is, an apple in the mind may be a magic apple that doesn't correspond to the real world , an archetypal, stereotypical, or typical apple, or a specific apple. An apple to an apple vendor is a much higher-resolution mind-apple than it is to most people because they understand apples with much greater detail.

•Time is experienced (sometimes measured) change.

The laws of physics explain how things change over time.

Time is experienced as a sub-set of Actuality that changes at a speed that is compatible with our embodied frame of reference, the clarity of our senses.

The past is remembered experience. The future is anticipated experience.

5) SPIRIT (of the patterns in the mind, no woo) Spirit is the metaphorical version of mind.

•Cognition is the emergent attribute of brain complexity. It is the capacity to introspect.

Reason is the emergent property of cognitive complexity.

•Death

To you, life begins when you can interact with your experience. That benchmark is tied to a working brain.

To yourself you are the continuity of your experience. To others you are the continuity of their experience of you. When your experience ends, you end.

Mind is a metaphor for the patterns in the brain. Soul is the idea that the mind or experience can transcend the brain. There is no mechanism by which that is possible.

Poetically there are three deaths, when you stop caring about life, when your homeostasis ends, and when you are forgotten.

•Everything means all distinguished patterns.

Those only exist in minds. A Thing is a pattern with a purpose.

The purpose is either danger/avoid or interest/approach.

All knowledge, wisdom, and understanding is for the purpose of actionable certainty toward changing the world in one of those two ways.

All things are a set of attributes and boundary conditions that align with our predictions about how our interactions will cause a change. In other words, we sense the edges, weight, color, likability.. of things in order to manipulate them.

•free Will

There is no sense in which our will is free. Causality is infinite in all directions, at all scales, forever.

We exist in the ignorance gap between chaos and causality. To the extent we do not understand causality, we may feel free.

The word "Will" alone is sufficient to discuss the experience of freedom.

•Repetition is the bedrock of memory. memory = repetition If you want to remember it better, practice repetition in a variety of circumstances.

Neurons that fire together, wire together. Memory is distributed. It is the probability matrix of the feedback loop of cognitive awareness. Neurons that fired in sequence in the past are more likely to do so again in the future. When your attention moves into that area again, your memory is that those patterns which fire now were most likely to have done so most frequently or most strongly, so that's the thing that is salient. In cases where you didn't care much, the memory is weak because the neurons didn't connect strongly. If you think about something a lot, even if it's no big deal, that path becomes engraved.

•Self is the internal story you tell about how you fit into the world and society. The world is the physical/material aspects of your experience and society is everything to do with yours and other minds, including your priorities and how you think about the minds of other creatures.

We are an embodied perspective on the universe. For some people, those things do not correlate, they merely overlap. Body Dysmorphia is when your sense of self does not correlate sufficiently with your sense of embodiment. Likewise there are dissociative disorders such as phantom limb syndrome that work in the other direction.

That embodiment is the substrate of Self, but Self is malleable both by external circumstance (Phineas Gage) or by internal effort.

Personality and character are overlays to the self which are more or less persistent or expressed in various circumstances. Like consciousness, there is not yet a consensus understanding of either.

•Sentience is the cognitive capacity of an animal, more or less the same as embodied cognition in persons. It is the emergent attribute of reproductive complexity.

It is the ability to experience pain and desire and the pantheon of related feelings; avoid and approach plus complexity

In general, plants are pre-sentient and animals are pre-cognizant life.

•A Thing is a pattern in a mind. It is a set of attributes and boundary conditions by which it is distinguished from all other things according to anticipated interactions.

The resolution of the purpose determines the resolution of the pattern. A thing salient (you care about a lot) to you contains a lot of detail.

Each thing has a unique place in the three physical dimensions; space, time, and scale.

All things have a physical correlate as a pattern in a mind (which is a metaphor for the patterns in the brain), but not all have an external referent. Sometimes an external referent is inaccurate.

6) TRANSCENDENT means the universe beyond what is accessible to our senses, our instruments, or our facilities of reason. Transcendence is the line between Actuality and Reality.

Words that reference the transcendent are mere placeholders for the ineffable.

•Certainty always and only means certain Enough for a specific use-case. When you reach that level of sufficiency there is no further reason to continue.

There are two kinds of certainty, justified and unjustified.

Knowledge is justified belief, and that justification is subject to the limitations of the information available to you as well as the physical capacity of your brain.

Unjustified belief is called faith, and is the polar opposite of knowledge.

•God is real as a concept in a mind, and there are as many versions as there are people who have thought about it.

All versions of god contain logically impossible, mutually exclusive, or otherwise ineffable attributes, making them indistinguishable from fiction. Theology is attempting to explain the impossible in terms of the incredible and is therefore intellectually regressive and Ought to be treated accordingly. No version of god has ever been adequately (sufficient to convince a conscientious skeptic) demonstrated to be possible, much less plausible, much less likely, much less actual.

-Igtheism -the idea of god is too ineffable to discuss rationally

-Atheism -lack of belief in any god

-Agnosticism -lack of certainty in one's belief about god.

All are correct, in that order of importance.

•Infinity is a direction.

Infinity is the same as etcetera or "keep going".

Infinite means there is no anticipated end . Indefinite means an end is anticipated within a certain range.

Infinity is ineffable. It is not a concept that can be related to quantity and math cannot be done with it. Math requires specificity.

•Nothing

There is no such thing as nothing.

In practical use the word always refers to a specific use-case. The only way there could be no-thing is of there were no minds.

The way some-thing can come from no-thing is metaphorically, because things didn't exist before minds existed to distinguish them. It was just undifferentiated stuff.

•Perfection is a direction, not a destination. You may achieve perfection as close as possible by continuously improving.

It is not possible for a limited mind to understand what it would want in any ultimate sense, only in relation to its immediate perspective.