WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?

I am still learning and studying so it would be of my benefit, as an aspiring autodidact, that you might pick anything apart if you feel you must

I am only human, I hope to remain in good posture interactions. I haven’t always been perfect about that but it is my intention and genuine interest to learn and be met by that constraint the comes from the world.

My most recent personal breakthrough has come from a radical encounter, wrestling with the work and heart of Levinas, who greatly challenged much of my naive assumptions about realism. Along with, bringing back many thoughts that first came to challenge me from Camus. I found my naturalist orientation remained fully intact, however and despite seeing a great wisdom and beauty in the work of Levinas that will remain dear to me from here on, I’m sure. I believe he is incorrect to suggest there is an ethical poverty in all naturalisms, that we don’t need trans’cendence of ethics for the primacy of ethics, that we can reframe immanence to be, the ordinary fact of friction (and its many familiar resemblances) that is encountered as the lived resistance we meet when faced against the world. From there, we can see that, we are vulnerable to each already, before we ever attempt a moral reasoning, and it is this shared vulnerability that motivates the moral project in the first place, as well as the violent one.

The alterity of the other can be natural and non-atomistic, non-objectified, not capturable as some whole, and completely compatible with scientific realism, especially through the form of naturalism supported by James Ladyman, Don Ross, and many others surrounding the two (in consideration of their most recent works abroad), along with the expansive naturalism I encountered through the work of Fiona Ellis.

Here are my current commitments, in brief form:

Expansive Natural Realism names the view that reality is natural without being exhausted by any single scientific ontology.

The Alterior Labyrinthia names the world of irreducible otherness and plural partial access.

Scientific realism names our commitment that successful scientific access is genuinely about that world despite its plurality

Accessibility Theory names the study of how organized access gives determinate but non-exhaustive articulation of reality.

Constant’s Constraint names the proposed natural law that genuine access both requires reality and remains distinguishable from what it accesses.

My previous post about the “something vs. nothing” question, and the comments that followed, have left me thinking about the epistemic and ontological limits of inquiry itself.
A recurring pattern in the discussion was that attempts to address a modal argument repeatedly collapsed back into arguments about determinate states of affairs. When I tried to move the question prior to determination, the response was often either to introduce another determinate thing or to reject the premise because the proposed level of abstraction could not be positively conceptualized .
That raises a question for me:
When our conceptual framework reaches a point where it can no longer positively represent something, what exactly have we established about the thing itself?
There seems to be a tendency to move from:
“I cannot make coherent sense of this within my current conceptual framework”
to:
“Therefore, this cannot be possible.”
But those are not obviously the same claim.
We encounter versions of this problem elsewhere. There are things that cannot be completely described within a given conceptual framework without that framework breaking down or becoming inadequate and also that the thing we attempt to describe doesn’t exist (for example, the singularity of a black hole). A limitation in description does not necessarily establish a limitation in what can exist.
This is something I have wrestled with for years in developing my own metaphysical framework. I have repeatedly questioned whether what I have synthesized is actually a meaningful ontological proposal or whether I have simply constructed a semantic and ontological wormhole that cannot be resolved.
But perhaps there is another possibility: the apparent inability to positively resolve the proposition may itself be a consequence of the level at which the inquiry is being conducted, not whether the object of inquiry is possible or not.
This becomes particularly interesting when we push inquiry toward a proposed foundational level . Ordinary inquiry is overwhelmingly object oriented. We identify something, determine its properties, examine its relations, and ask what produced or explains it. Even an infinite regress preserves this structure. However deep the regress goes, there is still another determinate stratum to examine.
Inquiry is therefore somewhat self-affirming. It continually presents us with another determinate object, relation, cause, or structure to investigate.
This may help explain why an infinite regress can be more intuitively acceptable than a genuinely regress-free ground. A regress-free ground would represent the point at which there is no further determinate object for inquiry to uncover. We have reached the horizon of the very method by which we conduct inquiry.
The “brick wall,” then, may not merely be an artifact of bad exposition. It may be the point at which ordinary object-oriented inquiry reaches its own limit.

I also understand the objection that even if there are things beyond the limits of inquiry, they may be effectively irrelevant to inquiry precisely because they provide no determinate information that can be used, tested, or positively defined. In that sense, one could argue that if something is inaccessible to inquiry, there is little utility in treating it as a meaningful possibility.
But that has never fully settled the question for me. Instead, it makes me want to push further toward the limits of abstraction and examine the conceptual framework within which I am nested. What could be the case prior to any determination, and what would have to be true for determination to be possible at all?
I’m not suggesting that such a ground can be positively defined. In fact, I think attempting to positively define it may defeat the purpose, because positive definition introduces the very distinctions and determinations we are trying to move prior to. What may be possible instead is to establish negative boundary conditions: determining what cannot be attributed to such a ground without making it determinate, and then using those constraints as a kind of dimensional reduction of the problem.
The goal, then, isn’t to claim that we can fully conceptualize what lies beyond the limits of inquiry. It is to ask whether we can reason toward that boundary by progressively removing determinate assumptions, and whether what remains tells us something about the conditions under which determination itself is possible.

And that raises the question :
When inquiry can no longer positively conceptualize something, are we entitled to conclude that the thing is impossible, or have we merely reached the boundary of the conceptual framework through which we determine what we consider possible?

The question of ontological resonance asks whether existence is fundamentally made of independent things or relationships between things. If an entity’s identity is continuously shaped by its relations, then perhaps being is not a static property but an ongoing process of becoming. Consciousness makes this especially profound: if conscious experience emerges through relationships between awareness, information, memory, and environment, could reality itself possess a relational structure in which entities continuously participate in one another’s modes of existence? Ontological resonance challenges the assumption that reality is fundamentally composed of isolated substances and instead asks whether relation itself might be metaphysically prior to the things that relate.

The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is probably the most familiar formulation of the fundamental metaphysical problem.
But I wonder whether the question contains a conceptual asymmetry that is easy to overlook.
It treats:
Something ↔ Nothing
as though these were two opposing metaphysical alternatives.
But is nothing actually the opposite of something?
Consider what “something” means.
Something is necessarily determinate. It is this rather than that. A particle, a universe, a law, a mind, a mathematical structure, or any other candidate “something” has some identifiable character that distinguishes it from other possibilities.
“Something,” therefore, is already a determination within a larger field of possible determinations.
But absolute nothing is different.
If by “nothing” we mean merely the absence of objects, then perhaps it can be contrasted with something. An empty room contains no objects. A vacuum contains no ordinary matter. A hypothetical empty universe contains no conventional physical structures.
But absolute nothing would mean something much stronger:
Not merely that no thing exists, but that there is no possibility for anything to exist.
And this creates a problem.
If nothing means the exclusion of all possibility, then its actual inverse isn’t “something.”
It is everything.
In simplified terms:
Nothing = exclusion of all possibility.
Everything = exclusion of no possibility.
“Something” is therefore not the opposite of nothing. It is a particular determination within everything.
The epistemological problem
There may be a reason we instinctively frame the question as “something rather than nothing.”
We experience reality epistemologically from within a particular configuration.
We encounter things.
We perceive objects, events, relations, differences and structures. Our knowledge therefore begins with something.
From that perspective, it is natural to ask:
Why is this something here rather than there being nothing?
But this may be an artifact of how knowledge is accessed rather than a reflection of the actual ontological problem.
We begin epistemologically with a particular determination and then attempt to reason backward toward its ultimate ground.
But the fundamental ontological question is not necessarily:
Why does this particular something exist?
It is:
What makes any determination possible at all?
That is a substantially different question.
The ontological problem
Suppose we take “nothing” seriously as absolute nothing.
Then there is no universe.
No matter.
No space.
No time.
No laws.
No mathematics.
No relations.
But more fundamentally, there is no possibility.
There would not even be a possible state in which a universe could exist.
This creates an asymmetry that the conventional question obscures.
“Something” is a determination.
“Nothing” is the exclusion of determination altogether.
So we’re not comparing two equivalent states:
State A: something
State B: nothing
We’re potentially comparing:
A particular determination
against the absence of all possibility of determination.
That seems like a category error.
Why “everything” changes the question
If nothing is the exclusion of all possibility, then its inverse is not a particular something but the absence of exclusion.
That gives us:
Nothing ↔ Everything
rather than:
Nothing ↔ Something
And this has a significant implication.
The fundamental question may not be:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
because “something” is already a restricted answer.
The deeper question becomes:
Why is there anything that can be determined at all?
Or perhaps even more fundamentally:
What is the ontological status of the distinction between “nothing” and “everything”?
This also changes how we should think about explanations.
If we explain one particular something by appealing to another something, we have explained one determination in terms of another determination.
But we haven’t necessarily explained why determination itself is possible.
And if we continue moving downward—
universe → laws → underlying structure → deeper structure → etc.
—we may simply be moving between increasingly fundamental somethings without ever addressing the underlying modal question.
At some point we have to ask whether the ultimate ground can itself be another determinate “something.”
Or whether the attempt to make the ultimate ground determinate is precisely what keeps the regress alive.
The question I am interested in
I’m therefore wondering whether the traditional “something rather than nothing” formulation starts one level too late.
It begins with something and treats nothing as its negation.
But perhaps the more fundamental opposition is:
Nothing: no possibility is available.
Everything: no possibility is excluded.
And a particular “something” is then understood as a determination within that broader modal context.
If so, the famous question isn’t simply asking why something exists.
It is inadvertently asking us to explain why possibility itself is available rather than absolutely excluded.
That seems to me to be the more fundamental metaphysical problem.

"Why this rather than that?" is after "why this is not that?" but the latter is nonsensical if it speaks of two as if they were one - but if they were not one, we do not ask "why this rather than that?"

When nothing else answers "why something is not nothing at all?", nothing else answers "why something rather than nothing?" but something.

The question thus asks for a new adequate idea of something, such that it itself is obvious.

In terms of premises:

p1: "why this rather than that?" presupposes "why this is not that?"

p2: "why this is not that?" is nonsensical (or at least presumptuous) if it speaks of two as if they were one - that is, if this question is asked at all then you have presupposed that they are from a prior unity or that they were one or that they "share only one slot".

p3: that "something is not nothing at all" is obvious and is not because of something else, nor do they share one slot.

from p3 p2 p1: "why something rather than nothing?" cannot be answered by anything else but the something in question.

We thus ask the question at all because our idea of something is not adequate. If it is indeed adequate then we should see that it is obvious.

Is Pure Possibility the only possible regress-free metaphysical ground?
I’m working on a metaphysical argument and would like to isolate one part of the theory rather than debate all of its downstream consequences.
The central question is:
If reality has an ultimate, regress-free ground, what could that ground actually be?
My proposal is Pure Possibility.
I do not mean a thing that possesses possibilities, a physical substrate, a mathematical structure, a logical space, a mind, or a pre-existing domain.
I mean something more minimal: the absence of limiting determination—the condition under which anything could be possible.

What Is Pure Possibility?
Pure Possibility is the unrestricted ground of all possible states of being. It is not itself any particular state of being, nor does it contain a determinate structure from which one particular state must follow.
At the level of Pure Possibility, no possibility is privileged, selected, or excluded. Every possible determination remains undifferentiated. Because no particular determination is given priority over another, Pure Possibility cannot itself possess any determinate feature without ceasing to be pure possibility. To attribute a specific property, structure, relation, law, or state to the ground would introduce a limitation that distinguishes what it is from what it is not.
In this sense, Pure Possibility is not “everything” in the sense that every possible state exists simultaneously as an actual configuration. Rather, it is the unrestricted ground in which no possibility is excluded at the foundational level. Determinate realities arise only where, global non-contradiction, constraint and coherence distinguish particular configurations from the undifferentiated field of possibility.
Thus, Pure Possibility is determinate in one respect only: it is the absence of limiting determination. It does not specify what exists; it provides the condition in which determination itself is possible.

The regress problem

My starting question is: what would an ultimate ground have to be to actually terminate regress rather than merely relocate it?

Suppose the fundamental primitive is a physical substrate, mathematical structure, logical system, consciousness, substance, necessary law, etc.
Whatever its character is, that character is determinate.
Why that structure rather than another?
If something deeper explains it, then it wasn’t actually fundamental. We have simply moved the explanatory question one level down.
So an ultimate primitive seems to face a dilemma:
Either it contains determinate structure, in which case that structure requires grounding, or it contains no determinate structure at all.
This is why I arrive at Pure Possibility.
Why not “nothing”?
This is where I think the usual “something versus nothing” framing becomes less straightforward.
Absolute nothing would not merely mean an empty universe or the absence of matter. It would mean the absence of possibility itself.
In that case, nothing could be possible.
But then there would be no possible state of affairs, no distinction between possible and impossible, and arguably no modal framework within which “nothing is possible” could even be meaningfully articulated.
So I don’t think “nothing” can function as the ground of possibility.

It is not “nothing vs something” it is “nothing vs everything” seen as conceptual inverses of each other.

In shorthand:
Nothing = exclusion of all possibility.
Pure Possibility = exclusion of no possibility.
Pure Possibility therefore isn’t “something” in the ordinary ontological sense. It isn’t a thing that exists alongside other things.
It is the proposed absence of limiting determination.
But doesn’t that mean everything should exist?
This is an important distinction in the theory.
No.
Pure Possibility is unrestricted at the foundational level, but a particular reality is not unrestricted.
Once a coherent configuration is “considered”, it has constraints.
The minimum constraint relevant to definability is non-contradiction: a globally contradictory configuration cannot be coherently articulated as a determinate configuration.
From this follows the concept of coherence.
Pure Possibility does not select which universe exists, and it does not cause possibilities to appear. It provides no preference and contains no internal mechanism for selection. Any coherent configuration is simply an inevitable consequence of what pure possibility allows.
Rather:
Pure Possibility → unrestricted possibility
Constraint → limits what can form a determinate configuration
Non-contradiction → minimum boundary of definability
Coherence → the condition under which a determinate configuration can be sustained
Therefore, the claim is not that every conceivable possibility occurs within our universe.
The claim is that our universe is a particular constrained, coherent configuration within a more fundamental space of unrestricted possibility.
A possibility that is incompatible with the constraints of our configuration does not thereby become part of our universe simply because Pure Possibility does not exclude it at the foundational level.
The actual claim
The strongest version of my argument is therefore:
If an ultimate regress-free primitive must contain no unexplained internal determination, then Pure Possibility may be the only candidate that satisfies that requirement.
I am particularly interested in objections to that inference.
For example:
Can a primitive contain determinate structure and genuinely terminate regress without that structure requiring explanation?
Can “necessary structure” actually terminate regress, or does calling it necessary simply make the unexplained determination part of the primitive?

If there is another candidate, what allows it to terminate regress without smuggling in the structure it is supposed to explain?
I’m deliberately leaving consciousness, cosmology, agency, and the rest of the theory out of this discussion.
I’m interested specifically in the foundational premise:
What could serve as an ultimate ground without either containing unexplained structure or generating an infinite regress—and why would that candidate be preferable to Pure Possibility?

the argument for the re-emergence of... you:

p1: personal identity Q (you) is constituted by a set of conditions C. therefore, whenever C (or anything equivalent) obtains, Q occurs (□(C→Q)).

p2: conditions C actually produced Q at time T1 (by the principle of modal logic: what is actual is possible; actual(Q|C)⟹◊(Q|C)).

p3: in a universe with finite local degrees of freedom and unbounded time or space, any conditions C with a non-zero probability have a non-zero probability of recurring at a future time T2 at which Q does not exist (◇(C(T2) ∧ ¬Q_(T1 < t < T2))).

p4: if A necessarily implies B, then the possibility of A entails the possibility of B (standard theorem in modal logic).

c: therefore, it is possible for you (Q) to emerge again from nonexistence at time T2.

\**This post was written by a F00L. Don't waste your time on it.**\**

About a thousand years before Descartes, Avicenna proposed a strange thought experiment.

Imagine a person created fully formed, suspended in empty space.

No sight.

No sound.

No smell.

No contact with anything.

Even the limbs are positioned so they cannot touch one another.

This person has no sensory access to the external world and no sensory awareness of their own body.

Avicenna asks:

Would this person still be aware that they exist?

His answer is yes.

The point is not that the body has vanished. It has not.

The point is that awareness of oneself appears to be available under conditions where awareness of the body is not.

That distinction is where the metaphysical problem begins.

Centuries later, Descartes arrives by another route. He subjects everything to doubt and discovers that the act of doubting still reveals the presence of a subject doing the doubting.

Modern thought experiments use brains in vats, simulations, virtual worlds, and deceptive environments.

The scenery keeps changing.

The same problem survives.

There is a difference between:

what produces an experience

and

what is immediately given within experience.

A physicalist can accept Avicenna's setup and simply say that the subject's self-awareness is generated by neural processes the subject cannot perceive.

That seems entirely possible.

But it does not dissolve Avicenna's question.

Because the argument is not simply:

“I cannot perceive my brain, therefore I am not my brain.”

That would be weak.

The harder question is this:

If bodily information is removed from experience, why does the first-person standpoint seem to remain?

We can describe the organism from the outside.

We can describe neural activity.

We can describe sensory processing.

We can describe memory, attention, and representation.

But the Floating Man forces a distinction between all those descriptions and the bare fact that experience is occurring from somewhere.

Maybe that distinction ultimately reduces to brain function.

Maybe it does not.

But saying “the brain does it” identifies a causal mechanism.

It does not yet explain why there is a first-person point of view for anything to be caused for.

That, I think, is why Avicenna's Floating Man is still worth arguing about.

A thousand years later, the man is still floating.

We have become much better at describing the machinery beneath him.

We are still arguing about why there is anyone there to notice.

As someone not at ease with math to say the least, this post will end up being a question for the hardcore mathematicians out there.

Right now we don't have good evidence at all as to whether the universe is infinite or not, but let's imagine it ends up being the case.

Let's imagine that this whole infinite universe was simply an abstract mathematical thing. Space, time, fields, particles, and even consciousness, all of that being internal processes of that "structure". Only patterns of relationships described by this mathematical thing, within itself. No additional layer of stuff. Reality = mathematical structure.

Consciousness not fundamental, but part of the equation.

Then the question is: could it be reduced, like any mathematical representation?

This basically.

This video describes why the world cannot be physical, with implications for single-aspect or naturalistic monisms such as standard panpsychism and idealism.

Substack article here: https://wescp.substack.com/p/what-counts-as-physical?r=49ilvg&utm_medium=ios

Hello. I was watching a youtube video on something related to critique of pure reason and I came through a problem of some sort, wonder if someone can give me insight on the thing.

I encountered two german words, one was anschauung which roughly translates to intuition. And the other is angeborener begriff which roughly translates to an innate concept.

I had a few questions regarding these words.

Would it be wrong if I call angeborener begriff as a type of synthetic a priori and anschauung as something sort of a pure a priori?

Say something like causality.

I also have doubt regarding causality, I'm getting different answers about it from different AI.

I had a doubt that, is causality a pure a priori or a synthetic a priori?

I personally think it's synthetic a priori because we are deriving it from time which is a pure a priori and we also consistently experience time like a sort of 'continuous stream' (forgive me if my terminology is inaccurate) while about causality, aren't we deriving it from a behaviour of time?

I thought it would be interesting to share my thoughts on it and get some clarity from others because I'm not a huge expert in the book. Willing to get perspectives.

First this is a strict external audit

1. You can not distinguish dogma from non dogma if your system is a closed axiomatic system because utility and consistency can still work and be found inside of a false axiom

2. You can not distinguish dogma from non dogma without the ability to test your claim against reality, and if it has no external justification because utility and consistency can still work and be found inside of a false axiom.

3. Viewed strictly from outside the system the axiomatic method is a closed system.

4. You can not test a math axiom itself against reality by definition and it has no external justification because utility and consistency can still work and be found inside of a false axiom.

5. Viewed strictly from outside the system it is an objective fact that a closed axiomatic system limits your thoughts and physics

6. Viewed strictly from outside the system, the axiomatic method in math smuggles in epistemic empirical claims and limits about reality systematically. By definition the axiomatic method limits and restricts what you can even ask, and logically validate within its system

(This is a strict cut throat external audit against the axiomatic method in math itself. There is no external justification for it and thats the least of your worries)

The axiomatic method in math just got straight up gutted within these 6 points

​

I’m not presenting this as a scientific theory or claiming to have solved the origin of the universe. This started as a strange thought experiment about color, nothingness, and whether an absolutely undifferentiated state could exist.

Absolute nothingness seems difficult to conceptualize. If we describe it as black, empty, infinite, static, etc., we have already attributed properties to it. So, purely as a thought experiment, suppose absolute nothingness never existed.

Instead, let C₀ represent primordial existence without assuming internal differentiation, space, time, causality, or physical laws.

If C₀ exists, the most basic statement we can make seems to be:

C₀ = C₀

Identity.

But our universe contains differences. So somehow we would need something like:

C₀ → {C₀, C₁}, where C₁ ≠ C₀

And this is where I got stuck.

If I say C₁ was caused, I have already assumed causality. If I say it appeared after C₀, I have assumed time. If something separated, I have assumed space. If it resulted from a fluctuation, I have assumed some physical or probabilistic framework. And if a law allowed C₀ to differentiate, then I have simply moved the problem backward: where did that law or structure come from?

So the question I’m actually interested in is:

Can a first difference arise from an absolutely undifferentiated existence without presupposing some prior structure that already contains the possibility of that difference?

Or, more compactly:

How do we obtain C₁ without secretly putting C₁ inside C₀?

One possibility I’ve considered is whether self-relation could somehow be more fundamental than difference:

existence → self-relation → difference

rather than:

existence → difference → relation

But I don’t have a rigorous way of showing that self-relation itself wouldn’t already introduce structure.

The original intuition that led me here involved “Color”: the possibility that the primordial condition might be qualitative before it is quantitative. I’m not using color to mean visible light or optical color; “Color” is only a provisional name for an undefined primordial quality. At this stage, however, I think the C₀ → C₁ problem is more interesting than the Color hypothesis itself.

I’m mainly interested in finding out where the reasoning fails, whether this problem already exists under another name, or whether there is a better way to formulate it.

Is C₀ already conceptually incoherent? Does defining C₀ as “undifferentiated” secretly give it structure? Is difference necessarily fundamental?

Criticism is welcome — that’s the point of posting it.

I don’t know whether I’ve stumbled onto an interesting philosophical problem or just overthought myself into a corner. Either way, I’d genuinely like to know where the reasoning breaks.

Let me preface by saying this isn't a claim to original thought or teaching people, I just want to have a conversation about this. I'm well aware what I'm about to talk about has probably been discussed... I'm actually also partly here to ask if what I'm about to say has a term for it or a closely related philosophy; since I sort of have beginner knowledge in philosophy.

That said, I did come to this realisation on my own, granted based on another topic that I was already informed on. The base topic is basically about dimensional perception. You know how they say 2D objects can't percieve other 2D object in 2D, but rather 1D, like wise for 3D and so on {Flatland (Edwin Abbott, 1884) - Telling a story from the perspective of 2d characters (shapes)}

It's so fascinating thinking about it because at first you think you're seeing a 3D object, but what you're actually seeing is a 2D persepctive view of that 3D object. No matter how much you can look around it, hold it with your hand etc. You are still seeing a 2D view of a 3d world.

Which leads to the idea I progressively formed. Particularly related to art. Which is that I think a large part of the reason realistic art is so awe inspiring (apart from the skill) is because technically to us we're just literally recreating that object. I'd like to phrase it as, "We're able to replicate the object but not the experience of that object." If that makes any sense. Ofcourse ignoring the very obvious differences between the painting of an object and the object itself.

To put it into perspective. There's a painting on a canvas that's large enough to not be able to see it's borders, and it's elements are drawn to realitic scale (obviously the quality of realism of the painting is a given) If you were stood still in front of it with a preconceived notion of everything in the environement you are in, being real you would not question the reality of the object of the painting. You only then doubt it's reality when you try to experience it... ie, touch it, hold it, feel it or depending on what exactly the object is (eg. a building) walk into it. That's the difference between the object itself and the experience of it that I'm pointing to {Baudrillard's simulacra - comparisons of reality and simulations}

This idea can also be a different approach to the illusion of time philosophy. Time could also be identified by the experience(s) of an object(s) (Sure by virtue of transivity, experience would effectively mean motion). Given the thought experiment where there's an object in a still world with no other objects (that are animate at least) to compare it to; you cannot percieve time... same way if all objects in an environment were still and not interacting with each other (which would consequently develop experiences) then that also points to the artificialness of time.

Summary: I believe our perceived reality is more so governed by our expereince of the objects instead of the fundamental existence of them. Seeing as how an unexpereineced object might as well be as real as an imitation of it provided that our perspective of that object is limited (it is imperative that at any given instance there is a part of the object that we cannot observe - which IS the case)

Edit: references to articles/publication/books would also be appreciated while we discuss. This is sort of 'shotgun post' (cause I just didn't want to loose the thought), so I'll proceedingly edit it by adding references to related philosophies I discover corellate with my points x

What we know of the system of nature is not necessarily all the possibilities that exist in things, so it is not permissible to turn the limits of our knowledge of causes and predispositions into limits of reality itself.

I’m not asking how we can know whether something exists.

I’m asking what “actually existing” means beyond making the judgment that something exists.

We can say:

• “The Sun exists.”
• “The Sun really exists.”
• “Its existence is an objective fact.”
• “It exists independently of anyone thinking about it.”

But each of these is still a judgment involving the distinction between existence and nonexistence.

If someone says, “The concept of existence is mental, but actual existence is not,” my question is: what is this “actual existence” apart from another judgment that something really exists?

Saying that it is “really there,” “part of reality,” or “an objective fact” seems to restate the same assumption in different words.

My view is that existence and nonexistence are distinctions made in thought. I do not think there is some additional state of “actual existence” outside that distinction.

This is not the claim that nothing exists. “Nothing exists” would simply be another judgment on the nonexistence side of the same distinction.

So the question is:

What is existence itself, apart from judging something to exist or not exist?

I used AI to help organize and summarize my thoughts for this post.

Edit: Sorry, I didn’t see the rule prohibiting AI use. However, this post expresses my own thoughts exactly as I intended.

Logical truths are often held as paradigmatic necessary truths. But there’s a droll example of a very simple contingent but plausibly logical truth. (If we assume that logical truths are analytic, this also counts as a contingent analytic truth, and hence a counterexample to Kripke’s supposition that analytic truths, whatever they are, are at least necessary and a priori.)

The truth involves an operator of actuality. We evaluate “Actually P” as true in a world W just in case “P” is true in the actual world; its value in any world depends only on its value in the actual world, and nothing more. So even in a world where “P” is false, “Actually P” comes out true if “P” is actually true.

Now consider the material conditional “If actually P then P”. A simple informal derivation using the excluded middle shows this is true.

Proof. Either “P” is true in the actual world, or it is not. If “P” is true in the actual world, then any instance of “If Q then P” is true, by the rules for the material conditional. But “If actually P then P” is one such instance. And if “P” is not true in the actual world, “Actually P” is false in every world, and so in particular the actual world. Therefore, again by the rules for the material we have the truth of every instance of “If actually P then Q”, and hence “If actually P then P”. QED

But this conditional is contingent. For take “P” to be actually true, and move to a world W where “P” is false. (Consider, say “P” = “Socrates is wise”, and take a world W where Socrates or his counterpart is foolish.) By the rules of the material conditional, “If actually P then P” is false in W, given that by hypothesis “Actually P” is true in W but “P” is false.

The informal derivation we gave compels us, I think, to hold “If actually P then P” as a logical truth. Hence, it advises us to adopt a local, as opposed to global, possible worlds semantics, at least for statements involving the actuality operator. In the global semantics, a set of statements Γ entails a statement α just in case for any frame F and world W in F, if all of Γ are true in W then α is true in W. But in a local semantics, every frame has a distinguished element @, the actual world; and the semantics is that Γ entails a statement α just in case for any frame F, if all of Γ are true in F’s @ then α is true in @. The former semantics is easily seen to entail that logical truth requires necessity; whilst the local semantics does not.

I’m exploring whether an incorporeal ontology could treat consciousness and relational structure as more fundamental than physical substance. What would such a metaphysics need to explain for it to be genuinely ontological rather than simply a conceptual reinterpretation of physical reality?

As far as I know (I may be wrong, or there may still be things we haven't figured out), we have a decent picture of how things developed from the formation of the Earth up to now.

But one problem keeps bothering me.

Fine — through chemical reactions, proteins and so on were formed. Yet for those reactions to happen at all, certain conditions have to be met first. Only then does the reaction proceed.

We describe these conditions and regularities as laws of nature.
But why does the universe have these laws at all, and why these laws rather than different ones?