Existence was imagined and it was imagined infinite

[Bassil]

When perceiving, there are things

1. that we can’t comprehend yet we can imagine.
2. and there are things that neither we can comprehend nor we can imagine.

 

An example of the first is water in a bottle that keeps flowing out until it makes a river. We can't comprehend the idea that water in a bottle will end up creating a river. Yet we can imagine it. We can imagine the water keeps flowing and flowing until it creates a river.

 

An example of the second is perceiving a mountain in its full size inside a keyhole! We can't either comprehend or imagine a mountain in its full size into a keyhole.

 

Perceiving existence as finite neither can be comprehended nor can be imagined. Try it.

Perceiving existence as infinite can't be comprehended, yet it can be imagined. All it's needed is to be imagined without boundaries and flow endlessly like the water in the bottle.

1. Existence can't be comprehended to be finite.

2. Existence can't be imagined to be finite.

3. Existence can't be comprehended to be infinite.

4. Existence can be imagined to be infinite.

The result is that existence is imagined and it was imagined infinite.

Since existence was imagined, it was a thought, a God thought.

[Nofear]

Or it is simply self existent independent of any consciousness at all.

[mfbukowski]

What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By Ludwig Wittgenstein.

[Pyreaux]

 

[Dario_M]

So....what you're basically saying is that our existence is just our imagination? Or how do i need to understand your topic if i may be so free to ask politely? 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Dario_M

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Dario_M said:

So....what you're basically saying is that our existence is just our imagination? Or how do i need to understand your topic if i may be so free to ask politely? 

Agree.  The language is quite ambiguous for me as well. I am an analytic philosopher- for me if it cannot be said clearly one might as well not bother. And so I am not bothering- but you are not alone!

[The Nehor]

9 hours ago, Bassil said:

1. Existence can't be comprehended to be finite.

2. Existence can't be imagined to be finite.

3. Existence can't be comprehended to be infinite.

4. Existence can be imagined to be infinite.

The result is that existence is imagined and it was imagined infinite.

Ummm……no.

[mfbukowski]

Error

Edited August 23, 2023 by mfbukowski

[Bassil]

4 hours ago, Dario_M said:

So....what you're basically saying is that our existence is just our imagination? Or how do i need to understand your topic if i may be so free to ask politely? 

No. Existence isn't our imagination. You no those who say, there is no reality; it's all an illusion. I don't agree with that. Existence isn't our thought; it's God's. For God, existence is a thought, his thought. For us, existence is 100% real.

[Bassil]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Agree.  The language is quite ambiguous for me as well. I am an analytic philosopher- for me if it cannot be said clearly one might as well not bother. And so I am not bothering- but you are not alone!

No. Existence isn't our imagination. You no those who say, there is no reality; it's all an illusion. I don't agree with that. Existence isn't our thought; it's God's. For God, existence is a thought, his thought. For us, existence is 100% real.

[Benjamin McGuire]

12 hours ago, Bassil said:

1. Existence can't be comprehended to be finite.

2. Existence can't be imagined to be finite.

I don't think that these premises are true.

We can find examples of individuals who not only imagine that existence is finite, but who comprehend existence as finite. These cannot be your starting premises because you already have a set of unstated assumptions about what existence is and how it should be understood. If you don't explicitly include those assumptions, then these two premises fail from the start - whenever we introduce ideas that don't agree with those original assumptions. For example, anyone who can envision the big bang theory, the expansion of the universe, and so on, has already imagined and to some extent comprehended a finite existence (on a cosmic scale). Anyone who does not believe in an existence apart from our experience of mortality can also imagine and comprehend a finite existence on a personal level. In both cases, existence can be both imagined and comprehended as finite.

[Bassil]

4 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I don't think that these premises are true.

They are true.

If we assume existence is finite we assume there are boundaries. How thick are those boundaries? What is beyond those boundaries? If we tried to imagine it, then the same questions are applied.

[Benjamin McGuire]

21 minutes ago, Bassil said:

They are true.

If we assume existence is finite we assume there are boundaries. How thick are those boundaries? What is beyond those boundaries? If we tried to imagine it, then the same questions are applied.

Just because you assert that they are true doesn't make them true. Why does there have to be anything beyond those boundaries? That question alone tells me that you are making a lot of assumptions that our present day physicists and cosmologists don't make. We can imagine such a thing - and people imagine such things all the time. I'll provide you with a simple well known example - our physicists have for a long time now argued for the idea of an expanding universe. Such a concept is meaningless, if, as you suggest, we cannot imagine a finite and bounded universe. Your premises just don't fit real world experience.

[Nofear]

16 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Just because you assert that they are true doesn't make them true. Why does there have to be anything beyond those boundaries? That question alone tells me that you are making a lot of assumptions that our present day physicists and cosmologists don't make. We can imagine such a thing - and people imagine such things all the time. I'll provide you with a simple well known example - our physicists have for a long time now argued for the idea of an expanding universe. Such a concept is meaningless, if, as you suggest, we cannot imagine a finite and bounded universe. Your premises just don't fit real world experience.

For a long time we didn't know if the universe was “closed” – that is finite. We definitely imagined, conceived, and thought about it

It currently appears to be “flat”. Being infinitely extensive is consistent with that geometry but we really can only speak to our visible universe. Nonetheless, cosmology has imagined every scenario the OP asserted could not be. Cosmologists were and are good at thinking up crazy things.

[Bassil]

1 hour ago, Nofear said:

For a long time we didn't know if the universe was “closed” – that is finite. We definitely imagined, conceived, and thought about it

Can you either comprehend or imagine a mountain in its full size in a keyhole? No. Every time you try to imagine it you imagine the mountain so small, not in its full size, to fit into the keyhole. You understand the idea. You understand what I mean by trying to comprehend or imagine a mountain in its full size in a keyhole. Your capability to understand the idea doesn't mean you can imagine it.

Some physicists suggest that existence has 11 dimensions. Can you imagine an 11-dimensional world?

[Bassil]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Just because you assert that they are true doesn't make them true.

Can you either comprehend or imagine a mountain in its full size in a keyhole? No. Every time you try to imagine it you imagine the mountain so small, not in its full size, to fit into the keyhole. You understand the idea. You understand what I mean by trying to comprehend or imagine a mountain in its full size in a keyhole. Your capability to understand the idea doesn't mean you can imagine it.

Some physicists suggest that existence has 11 dimensions. Can you imagine an 11-dimensional world?

[Dario_M]

6 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Agree.  The language is quite ambiguous for me as well. I am an analytic philosopher- for me if it cannot be said clearly one might as well not bother. And so I am not bothering- but you are not alone!

Thank you mfbukowski, nice to know. 😉 beautiful word btw: Analytic Philosopher. Oh my oh my...the English language is so beautiful. Most beautiful language of the whole world in my opinion.

[Dario_M]

3 hours ago, Bassil said:

No. Existence isn't our imagination. You no those who say, there is no reality; it's all an illusion. I don't agree with that. Existence isn't our thought; it's God's. For God, existence is a thought, his thought. For us, existence is 100% real.

Interesing. Woow that goes deep.💫 Maybe that's the reason why God has so much power over us. 

[ksfisher]

12 minutes ago, Bassil said:

Can you either comprehend or imagine a mountain in its full size in a keyhole?

How big is a mountain?  How small is a keyhole?

[Benjamin McGuire]

29 minutes ago, Bassil said:

Some physicists suggest that existence has 11 dimensions. Can you imagine an 11-dimensional world?

This is meaningless though. Your premises don't require that we envision a world with 11-dimensions. This is what I meant when I suggested you had hidden assumptions. Unless you are asking us to consider it only in the context of an 11th dimensional world, we don't need to consider it in that context.

[Bassil]

42 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

How big is a mountain?  How small is a keyhole?

Let's say the mountain is one kilometer high. The keyhole is half a centimeter in diameter.

[Bassil]

28 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This is meaningless though.

I'm explaining to you that physicists may suggest theories that can't be imagined.  

[CA Steve]

35 minutes ago, Bassil said:

I'm explaining to you that physicists may suggest theories that can't be imagined.  

Can you imagine people being able to do things you can't?

[Dario_M]

Bassil thank you for your heart again. 💙

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, Bassil said:

I'm explaining to you that physicists may suggest theories that can't be imagined.  

No, you aren't explaining this to me. What you are suggesting is that some physicists may suggest theories that can't be imagined (I'll get to the question of whether we can imagine or comprehend an 11th dimension in a moment). The thing is, most physicists don't require an 11th dimensional world. And most physicists will tell you that the universe as we know it is expanding. And in this context, most physicists would agree that we can both imagine that the universe is finite and that we can comprehend the universe as finite.

When you provide premises for a formal argument (the sort of argument you are trying to make) they either have to be qualified or they have to be universally applicable. It seems obvious that they are not universally applicable. So if you cannot provide a qualification for them, then my understanding is that your premises are simply wrong. There are lots of circumstances and beliefs in which we can both imagine and comprehend a finite universe.

Now, back to the 11th dimension. The 11th dimension is a mathematical construct. The first four dimensions in string theory are length, width, height, and time. And, so that you don't think that I am simply making stuff up, I'll refer to statements from the Wikipedia page on string theory.

Quote

In spite of the fact that the Universe is well described by 4D spacetime, there are several reasons why physicists consider theories in other dimensions. In some cases, by modeling spacetime in a different number of dimensions, a theory becomes more mathematically tractable, and one can perform calculations and gain general insights more easily.[b] There are also situations where theories in two or three spacetime dimensions are useful for describing phenomena in condensed matter physics. Finally, there exist scenarios in which there could actually be more than 4D of spacetime which have nonetheless managed to escape detection.

Let's start with that first statement. "The Universe is well described by 4D spacetime." What does this mean? It means that while we may need these extra dimensions to understand the mathematics behind the physics of the universe, we don't need these extra dimensions to describe (and so to imagine or to comprehend) the universe as we encounter it.

Quote

String theories require extra dimensions of spacetime for their mathematical consistency. In bosonic string theory, spacetime is 26-dimensional, while in superstring theory it is 10-dimensional, and in M-theory it is 11-dimensional. In order to describe real physical phenomena using string theory, one must therefore imagine scenarios in which these extra dimensions would not be observed in experiments.

So, I want to highlight something here. "In order to describe real physical phenomena using string theory, one must therefore imagine scenarios ..." In other words, physicists who argue for the existence of these extra dimensions have already imagined that they exist, and can imagine both how they work and circumstances under which their existence will not change or challenge our existing observations about the universe.

Quote

One approach to formulating string theory and studying its properties is provided by the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence. This is a theoretical result which implies that string theory is in some cases equivalent to a quantum field theory. ... One can imagine a stack of hyperbolic disks where each disk represents the state of the universe at a given time. The resulting geometric object is three-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. It looks like a solid cylinder in which any cross section is a copy of the hyperbolic disk. Time runs along the vertical direction in this picture. The surface of this cylinder plays an important role in the AdS/CFT correspondence. As with the hyperbolic plane, anti-de Sitter space is curved in such a way that any point in the interior is actually infinitely far from this boundary surface.

Again, imagining the conditions under which these dimensions exist doesn't lead to something incomprehensible but rather to something very comprehensible. But, you might say, how does this actually relate to my premises? Well, there we get a more technical turn:

Quote

An important feature of anti-de Sitter space is its boundary (which looks like a cylinder in the case of three-dimensional anti-de Sitter space). One property of this boundary is that, within a small region on the surface around any given point, it looks just like Minkowski space, the model of spacetime used in nongravitational physics. One can therefore consider an auxiliary theory in which "spacetime" is given by the boundary of anti-de Sitter space. This observation is the starting point for AdS/CFT correspondence, which states that the boundary of anti-de Sitter space can be regarded as the "spacetime" for a quantum field theory.

Now we add the concept of boundaries - that is, we make spacetime finite. Now, I could continue, but you can read the article. There is something else that is relevant here. Of the 11 dimensions, we experience four of them. Of the remaining 7, we have six that exist as entirely bounded systems - three of these dimensions exist within quarks, and three more exist within gluons. Then, mathematically, we have a final (11th) dimension that is the envelope in which everything else exists - it is sometimes called "the cosmos of nothingness." And this is a mathematical concept - because, of course, we cannot observe it (how do you observe nothing? It isn't even the absence of something). When the universe expands, it doesn't expand into "something" - it doesn't even expand into "nothing" - it just simply expands.

The point of all of this? Physicists - even those who postulate these 11 dimensions - aren't going to agree with your premises that these dimensions make the universe unimaginable or incomprehensible. They would argue that the existence of these dimensions is precisely what makes the universe imaginable and comprehensible. If our goal wasn't to make it comprehensible, we wouldn't have a need for any more than the four that we find in our space-time.

And we are, at this point, a very long way from the idea of mountains and keyholes ... most of us don't have any problems imagining or comprehending a finite universe (either scientifically or theologically).

Edited August 23, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire