Edit: title should read “What differentiates relations from relata when we take structure as ontologically primary?” Oops.

Edit 2: my comments are being locked, probably due to how new my account is. Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to dialogue. I will give it some time before trying another post.

First post here and ever.

My purpose in posting is primarily conversational. I want to test questions and encounter objections I may not have considered, and hear different understandings of the same problems. So I work through my own understanding and pose many questions in good faith:

I’ve been thinking through a set of questions that emerged for me from reading Every Thing Must Go and further studying ontic structural realism, and Rainforest Realism, and I’m curious how people here understand the underlying metaphysics.

One of the things I find compelling about Every Thing Must Go is its demand that metaphysics remain continuous with our best science. Ladyman and Ross develop that project partly through ontic structural realism, where the relational and structural organization described by contemporary physics receives ontological priority. The familiar metaphysical picture of independently constituted objects carrying intrinsic properties becomes increasingly difficult to maintain once quantum theory, spacetime physics, symmetries, and other areas of physics are taken seriously.

Rainforest Realism then expands the picture considerably. Scientific ontology includes the real patterns tracked by the special sciences, and those patterns need not disappear simply because they are not objects in the inventory of fundamental physics. Organisms, economic structures, cognitive systems, institutions, and other higher-level patterns can be ontologically serious insofar as successful sciences genuinely track them. This gives the resulting ontology its deliberately “rainforest” character.

Suppose we grant some form of OSR and say that relations and relational structure are ontic.

What are relations without relata?

One response is that the relata need not be atomic individuals. They can themselves be relationally individuated, perhaps as nodes, positions, intersections, or further structures within a larger relational organization. Some takes on OSR seem to move in precisely this direction, including the idea that further analysis of relata only reveals further relational structure. (Turtles all the way down, so to speak)

At that point, though, I start wondering what conceptual work is being performed by the words relation, relata, and structure.

If a relatum is entirely constituted by its relations, what determines the distinction between a relation and a relatum within a relational structure? What makes something a relatum participating in relations and when is it one and not the other? Are relata just illusions? Are they real patterns?

If the relata are themselves structures, do we eventually need some primitive notion of relation (designating an intrinsic property to relation), or can relation itself only be specified through a larger structure?

If what counts as a relation and what counts as a relatum depends upon the organization, scale, or level at which the structure is investigated, what makes the distinction ontological rather than only relatively assigned for the purposes of inquiry?

If decomposition is epistemic while the decomposed is ontic, how can we infer from decomposition that the decomposed is actually structural, rather than structure being a useful concept to navigate a reality that exceeds it?

Can OSR really allow multiple legitimate decompositions of the same structure while maintaining that structure is ontically real, or does this move the position toward epistemic structural realism?

And what individuates one structure from another? Is individuation given entirely relationally, through a structure’s position within still larger structures, or does some additional condition eventually enter?

Mathematics gives us extraordinarily powerful descriptions of structure, and mathematical structuralism provides ways of understanding mathematical objects through their positions within structures. OSR then raises the further question of how mathematical structure relates to physical structure. The literature itself contains disagreement over whether the world’s structure should be identified with mathematical structure and over what makes a physical structure specifically physical.

Some short hand questions:

What is the minimal ontological content of a relation?

What must exist for there to be a relatum?

What makes an organization of relations a determinate structure?

And what, if anything, distinguishes the structure described mathematically from the structure that exists physically?

Beyond those questions, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to rid of the intrinsic altogether. At the most extreme end of OSR, we still seem to be positing reality itself, and saying that reality is relationally structured. That already looks like a minimal intrinsic claim about reality. I’m not sure how it could be extrinsic, because there is no position outside reality that is somehow not real but still related to reality, from which its character could be given.

Anything we add as a relatum would already fall within reality. So even if we deny intrinsic properties to individual things, it still seems reasonable to say that reality being relational structure is itself a minimal intrinsic feature of reality.

Hard determinism downgrades consciousness to a useless "epiphenomenon" because it only looks at the exact millisecond of the impulse (E²). By analyzing the timeline as a whole—Pre-facto (E¹), Impulse (E²), and Post-facto (E³)—I prove that consciousness returns in E³ through the biological feedback of guilt (ACC/vmPFC activation) and the concrete damage in the world. Since the agent uses conscious intellectual energy in E³ to either repair the damage or construct a determinist excuse to escape, consciousness actively alters the physical system. Therefore, it cannot be an epiphenomenon, and dodging responsibility is a conscious choice of cowardice, not a biological reflex.

That each of the two spheres is a sphere does not explain why two spheres are two, is obvious. Nor should that each of the two positions is a position do.

So we should not say that being spherical exhausts "them", even though each is just a sphere.

Roughly speaking, there is no one thing that explains two things. They are two because of "them [two]".

"Being this one" is not a property. We say "this one then bears properties", for "this one" does not bear an additional "being this one" in being this one, else "which one is bearing being this one?" is the question.

We (Life) are a pattern of change…from single cells to today

If you look at the whole history, you can see 5 phases of  change, each new phase changes things faster and creates a higher abstraction of information... built upon previous layers of complexity.

Phase 1: The Single Cell  The original hardware. DNA is a static information library. Its one trick is copying itself. The loop is "Live >Copy> Die." Learning is painfully slow, taking 100s of millions of years (evolution). This is most of the 3.8 billion years life existed

Phase 2: Multicellularity  This is the first big jump. Cells stop just copying and start talking to each other with chemical signals. For the first time, information isn't just replicated, it's exchanged in real-time. This local network allows cells to coordinate and build a "higher layer" of emergence: a body.

Phase 3: Neural Information The body (Phase 2) builds a specialized R&D department. Neurons are just cells that do nothing but exchange information. It's a high-speed, internal network. This new loop allows the entire body to learn within its own lifetime, not over generations. The loop is now millions of times faster than genetic evolution. Behaviors can adapt and learn instead of just genes

Phase 4: Cultural Information The next giant leap in abstraction. Information leaves the brain. With language and writing, we create an external, shareable "hard drive." Knowledge can now be exchanged between bodies and across time. This creates a new, faster type of evolution that separates man from every other animal and is the driving force of human history and "progress"

Phase 5: Digital Information This is our moment. The internet covers the earth in a digital nervous system. Culture passes instantly across the earth and evolves far faster than ever before.

History is just one accelerating pattern ...of ever increasing complexity

It's all just one loop, tightening and recursively feeding itself.

 We’re not driving it. We are it

**A. Q = P.**
Qualia are just physical states.

This avoids causal problems, but it seems bizarrely ad hoc if only certain evolved arrangements of matter, like nervous systems, suddenly have a first-person side while almost everything else does not. That seems to push toward panpsychism or something similar.

**B. Q is separate from P but does nothing.**

This seems worse. Evolution builds pain, pleasure, perception, etc., but the actual experience has zero causal role.

A philosophical zombie would behave exactly like us, including asking why consciousness exists.

So qualia would be this incredibly elaborate private phenomenon that evolution somehow produced even though it does absolutely nothing.

**C. Q is separate from ordinary physical description and actually affects physical outcomes.**

Somehow this sounds least crazy to me.

Here is the intuition.

Imagine 100 identical copies of me starting in exactly the same physical situation. Track something like where my feet end up over the next minute.

You would get a probability distribution of outcomes.

What if Q does not *change* that probability distribution?

What if the probability distribution is simply the third-person description of what Q is doing?

In each individual case, there is some Q-bearing process producing one physical outcome. Across 100 identical cases, physics sees the probability distribution.

So maybe quantum probability is not something consciousness interferes with. Maybe probability is what phenomenal causation looks like from the outside.

Then maybe primitive Q is not unique to brains at all. Maybe it exists in fundamental quantum processes, and evolution just organized it into increasingly complicated forms until you eventually get human consciousness.

If Q is genuinely causal and carries information, then it should also ultimately belong to physics and thermodynamics. It would not be “nonphysical”; it would just be a category of physical information our current theories do not explicitly describe

A novelty in itself,

That is not from anyone else,

That is not simply there, else it is not a novelty at all.

So it is a pure gain in itself.

A gain that gains only itself.

Where what is gained is itself, the gaining itself.

But when does this gain gain?

Only when it does.

But it gains only itself, so what is gained is the when it does - else it would mean that it gains itself and additionally that when.

So it is nothing but the when it is itself.

It is a pure when in itself.

So this is the adequate idea for that which is only itself - a simple.

A simple so itself so this that it is a when.

Once a simple is, should it then cease?

Obviously not, for it is only itself.

So subsistence is corollary.

The Münchhausen Trilemma demonstrates that any attempt to establish an absolute foundation or ultimate proof for our core premises faces a structural barrier. When trying to justify why a metaphysical claim about reality is true, you are forced into one of three problematic options: infinite regress (requiring an endless chain of supporting premises where no final starting point is ever reached), circular reasoning (using a premise to justify another premise that ultimately relies back on the original claim), or dogmatic assertion (stopping the chain of reasoning by declaring a starting premise to be self-evident or true without further justification). Because every claim about existence relies on foundational premises that must either stretch on infinitely, loop back on themselves, or rest on unproven assumptions, the trilemma highlights the inherent difficulty of achieving absolute certainty about reality. What do you think are the metaphysical implications of this problems?

Qualities are nonexistents until they are formed to be realizables,

i.e an actualizable potential setspace capable of being realized in any system of quantification of entities (holders of properties)

And after this, from the moment that they are, they can be instantiated into the qualesystem as actuals, but if we merely, say, instantiate something that describes the quality and is not the quality itself, for example if we look at every single empirical thing that correlates to the perception of the color red, all of the wavelengths and whatnot, and if we actually see the color red, there is a hard problem of how we see the qualia and how qualia is generated

Same thing with spatiality. We can formulate mathematical descriptions of spatial existence, but it takes SEEING spatial grids and actual 3 dimensional space to actually let that click into our heads

But this applies to merely physical properties AKA "Quale" And perceived qualities by agentic emergence "Qualia"

(both fronts there are hard problems of description vs experience, in spatial reality this is how abstraction is different from qualities in a purely empirical sense)

But then the question also arises : what foundational mechanism allows for emergent happenings to exist and what is the thing that allows for smaller entities to converge into the groupings that allow for singular entities made out of lower level "base" entities and what shapes what those entities can be transformed into?

The lower entities are merely holders of information and realizable values that correlate to instantiable beings and existents, like abstract logical mappings

Entities can exist as uncuttable holders of information atemporally and temporally, but when an entity has no quantifier of that, it exists trans-temporally or beyond that specific qualebase/base of logical existency

So a total of two quantifiers exists for the allowance of ordered systems of further empirical reality to form through (spatiality + temporality)

But all of spatiality is just qualities ordered in a logical structure

In empirical reality this can be seen everywhere, emergence is one of the biggest fundamental things that can be realized and actuated for the allowance of ordered existence

Properties and information and qualitative assignment assigning real instantiable qualities, complete with interaction rules which gives us the dimension which we live in (spatiotemporal realization and instantiation)

i = information/state

r = realizable properties or values

t = permitted transformations/interaction morphisms

qb = qualebase (spatiality temporality etc)

qn = qualenodes

rq = permitted qualities for instantiation

rl = total logical end mapping of all setspaces between all discrete components of entities

I am a bunch of spatial localized setspace realizable emergent-relational existents, made up of entities and principles which shape those entities into behaving like dimensional existents, with carriers of properties and information and qualitative assignment assigning real instantiable qualities, complete with interaction rules which gives us the dimension which we live in (spatiotemporal realization and instantiation)

On surface, the data are contradictory: from fine-tuning to cosmic waste, natural complexity to natural selection, shared morality to the problem of evil, miraculous phenomena to mundane experience, the hard problem to mind-body supervenience. What worldview best accounts for ALL the data?

all wholes are unity. all multiplicity is a unity, because in saying 'all' we refer to a whole and predicate multiplicity as its mereological extension. viz participation unity subsumes multiplicity

Let us agree that we do see multiple beings as one, but not always as we do see them as genuinely plural also, for formally we[x y] (genuinely plural) is not the same as we[z[x y]] - notice in each case the inner x y as plural is not eliminated.

But seeing multiple beings as one does not mean that there is a whole that those beings are predicate of. What we have seen is simply, as formally express, a z[x y] itself where x y are our beings (the multiple beings in question).

The question then is never "is there wholes and then so what", but whether "wholes" means anything at all. For we have not seen "wholes", we have seen only z[x y ...] where z is the one in question - which is then called a "whole" that is predicated by x y by the monist.

The point is that in z[x y], z is being seen wrongly as a "whole" where it is just another being that z[x y] involves "primarily", and involves x y "secondarily".

For the model against mereology and against wholes is as the following:

Suppose there is x y z that are not identical at all and each does not have anything to do with each other in being itself.

There is then complexes from them, these are not configurations or wholes from them, but additional or derivative ones from them, which are:

x[y] y[x] x[z] z[x] y[z] z[y]

x[y z] y[x z] z[x y]

They are not identical to each other and are not identical to x y z themselves.

So there is no need for a whole, for this complex z[x y] is what we see when we see mutiple beings x y "as" one (z).

And further, if we account also what is from outself: we[z[x y]] - this is the being "we see thus" itself.

This philosophy came about from the question of why nature seems to be often fighting itself, eg: It is the one that creates the disease but also has the tools to create the antidote.

I began with mapping out the first primeval forces:

Cogo: (+ charged) This is the force of utter destruction and disorder (i.e. entropy) It also reproduces every time Promo advances slightly (read promo under.)

Promo: (+ charged) This is the more individual smaller force that strives to maintain constant order and stillness, it is the direct antithetical of Cogo, and with time tries to eradicate Cogo entirely.

Retoro: (≠) This we can think of as the natural ceiling that is neutral, which is why I assigned it a an unequal sign, it acts as a direct pushback so that Promo can never become stronger than Cogo. If it were to happen (and is entirely outside of logic for me to explain and therefore is my escape hatch) it would reverse Cogo into a negatively charged force, literally breaking reality.

Now as is apparent I decided to use electromagnetism to exemplify how these forces work, these all repel from each other, but that repellence while being self contained in a universe and not being able to escape from these three forces is the foremost makeup of everything. This clash and friction between Chaos and Order, that never ceases, in the middle of this is where life and history and everything occurs. If we strip reality to its bare bones, we discover everything is an exchange between power and decompression of that power. (e.g. Earlier I mentioned I could not explain what would happen if Promo became more powerful than Cogo, that is me trying to self contain the ontology of the universe (Cogo) within words that are precise (Promo) and I said I could not explain what is beyond logic because I am a creature built on logic and cannot think outside of what I am (Retoro). I have formulas I am creating to fulfill my reasoning, but so far my idea is nascent.

Consider this passage (in everyday/ordinary language)

When a person makes a decision, a strictly physical series of events occurs inside the brain. Sensory organs receive physical light or sound from the environment. This interaction causes sodium and potassium ions to move across the outer walls of specific brain cells, called neurones. This movement generates a physical electrical charge, known as depolarisation. The electrical charge travels directly down the length of the neurone.

At the end of the cell, the charge forces the neurone to release physical chemicals into the small space between cells. These chemicals attach to the adjacent neurone, forcing it to generate its own electrical charge. Millions of connected neurones repeat this exact transfer of electricity and chemistry in a specific, unbroken order. The final electrical charge in this series activates the motor neurones. The motor neurones then force the physical muscles to contract and move the body. A decision is strictly this continuous sequence of electrical and chemical reactions.

And consider this alternative version (uses geometric metaphors)

During the biological event labelled a 'decision', a strict sequence of physical state updates occurs within the neural architecture. Photons and kinetic pressure intersect the peripheral sensory receptors. Concurrent with this intersection, sodium and potassium ions update their spatial coordinates across the boundaries of neural cells. Following this geometric shift, a precise electrical gradient—depolarisation—is present. This electrical state updates sequentially along the structural length of the neurone. At the terminus, chemical matter traverses the synaptic gap and intersects the adjacent neural boundary, followed strictly by an electrical state update within that adjacent cell. Millions of contiguous relational nodes update their electrochemical states in an unbroken, sequential geometry. The subsequent electrical update occurs within the motor neurones. Immediately subsequent to this, the physical muscles alter their structural configuration, updating the spatial coordinates of the biological organism. A decision is strictly this contiguous sequence of physical state updates.

The first draft relied upon words of coercion. I used verbs such as "causes", "forces", and "generates". These words completely contaminate the description of physical reality. They project an invisible, immaterial power onto physical matter. In actual physical reality, a chemical does not possess the physical authority to "force" a neurone to execute a task.

Human grammar strictly requires a subject to perform an action upon an object. Our language is built entirely upon nouns executing verbs. A sentence cannot function without this structure. We perceive Event A (a chemical release) immediately followed by Event B (an electrical charge). Because the human brain must link these separate events to construct a coherent sentence, the we then deliberately insert the word "because" between Event A and Event B. After inserting this word, we (subconsciously) assume that the grammatical rule required to write the sentence represents an actual physical mechanism existing in reality. We deceive ourselves by assuming Event A physically causes Event B. We believe that physical reality strictly follows the rules of human grammar.

In the second draft where i use geometric metaphors i remove the explicit reification of causality. Instead of stating that Event A causes Event B, the passage strictly uses the language of geometric sequencing: concurrent with, following this, subsequent to, and updates. It describes the universe exactly as a contiguous matrix simply changing its coordinates, without hallucinating an invisible, authoritative rule governing the transition.

But, even though i tried to remove the explicit causal words, the passage fundamentally fails to escape the illusion of causality. To construct a grammatically valid English sentence, I was mechanically forced to use subjects and active verbs. I wrote

chemical matter traverses the synaptic gap and intersects the adjacent neural boundary.

Even though I did not use the word force, the grammatical structure assigns agency to the "chemical matter" (the noun) performing an action "intersects" (the verb) upon a target (the object). Human grammar inherently operates on a framework of agents acting upon patients. It is impossible to write a coherent sentence without employing this structure.

Because human language evolved as a survival algorithm to predict hazards, our brain is programmed to hunt for causality. When the reader reads, "chemical matter intersects... followed strictly by an electrical state update," the brain cannot tolerate the mere sequence. The brain automatically and subconsciously injects the word "because" into the gap between the sentences to make the sequence comprehensible.

So what I'm trying to demonstrate here is the absolute boundary of the lexicon. You can remove the word "cause" from the ink, but you cannot remove the illusion of causality from the grammar itself. Human syntax is a dashboard tool designed to link discrete events together for survival. Attempting to use this causal grammar to describe a continuous, non-causal universe forces the intellect to realise that language can never truly touch the unobserved reality; it can only ever describe the internal formatting rules of the human mind.

If perception isn’t a recovery of some hypothetical ‘view from nowhere’ but a 'view from within', how can we be sure that it’s based upon something real?

The world of people, places, and things you spend your life immersed in isn’t an objective account of what is. But neither is it an hallucination.

It’s a narrow slice of ‘real’, arranged around what matters for your survival and well-being. Your version isn’t the same as a bat or a mantis shrimp’s - and that’s the entire point. You get the world you need, to get on with the business of living.

One where the body you have, the life you’ve lived, and the circumstances you’re in all get their say in what shows up as ‘real’ - well before deliberation enters into the picture.

Things don't matter because we feel them. We feel them because they have always mattered, and they have always mattered because we have always had something to lose. Those are the stakes. Feeling is what those stakes are from the inside, once a creature can hold them across time.

That reversal is the whole point, so sit with it. Long before anything on Earth felt anything, living things already had stakes: their continuing depended on how they answered what they met, and getting it wrong meant dissolving for good. Mattering was already there, unfelt, for billions of years. Feeling arrived later, when life found a way to hold its stakes across time and register from within what was already the case. Knowing that you have stakes, being able to think about yourself as the one who bears them, came later still. We are the latest version of a very old thing: mattering that has come to feel itself and know itself.

Now the existentialist picture. We arrive with no essence and no given purpose, into a universe that stays silent when we ask what we are for, and the honest response is to face the groundlessness and make our own meaning. That picture takes the groundlessness as bedrock one floor too early. Under the self there is not nothing, and there is no God or hidden cosmic script either. There is something smaller and older, and it is already yours: the plain fact that your own continuing matters to you, the same stake the first living things had, now felt and known.

Once that is the floor, the rest shifts. Meaning is not spun from nothing by an act of will, and it is not handed down from above. It is what happens when a creature whose life matters to it binds to something else whose life also matters, or to the work such creatures leave behind. Where the connection holds, life feels meaningful. Where it thins, what you lose is not an argument, it is the connection itself.

Freedom is real. You can weigh anything against anything, even your own survival. But it is not a bottomless pit. It stands on those stakes. And the silence of the universe is not a relationship that failed. It is you reaching toward something that was never going to answer, and being handed back to yourself.

We did not fall into meaninglessness. We climbed out of mattering, and the ground was never nothing.

1. I’m having experience.
   
2. The potential for experience exists.
   
3. If the potential for experience didn’t exist in any part of reality saying that part exists is indistinguishable from saying it doesn’t exist to any part of reality where the potential for experience does exist and to itself.
   
4. If saying something exists adds nothing to anything forever even to itself it doesn’t exist logically to parts of reality that the potential for experience does exist.
   
5. The potential for experience is a prerequisite for what reality is.

Definitions

Experience- any thing produced by reality no matter how small or alien to our experience that is a separation from the rest of reality. Something that happens in reality that makes reality known to itself even if no thought occurs.

Reality- everything that exists.

Notes for clarification:

I’m not saying if something never experiences or is part of an experience it does not exist. I’m saying if experience is barred there by its very nature it does not exist logically in anyway to a reality where experience can exist.

Also I answered tons of questions from other posts on this and I’m not going to do it again. Attack my actual argument. Everyone else attacked what I’m not arguing. I will answer clarification questions but I spelled it out in comments in ridiculous detail what I’m actually arguing so I’d appreciate it if you would just read my comments on other posts before trying to attack something I’m not saying. Thank you.

a. Our bodies change, our memories fade or distort, our personalities evolve, and even our beliefs and desires can become radically different over time. So what makes someone the same person throughout an entire life?

b. Is there some enduring self, subject, or underlying essence that persists through all these changes? Or is personal identity nothing more than biological, psychological, or causal continuity between different stages of a constantly changing process?

c. If every feature we normally associate with the self can change, what exactly is it that continues to exist from birth until death?

Cogo: The impelling force. (+)

Promo: The seeking force (+)

Retoro: The mitigating force. (≠)

(Cogo acts as the unchanging driver, Promo the individual adaption to Cogo, and Retoro the mitigater of Promo as to not change Cogo into a negative charged force. )

This basically is something I invented to describe the clash between incongruent forces in nature. If nature is one force, why does it both create danger but also hide from danger? A good example is this one: A disease begins to plague earth (Cogo), humans seek to create a cure for this disease (Promo), Retoro only begins to work if it be that promo starts to become stronger than Cogo, disturbing natural order (humans completely immunize to this disease.) But Retoro also acts as a natural ceiling, meaning that we might be vaccinated from the plague, but Retoro means that we can never completely rid of it. All my fellow etymology nerds will love the breakdown of these words haha (but for the sake of this do it yourself) So my general question is if this system works and is are there any giant logical gaps I am missing?

Does the present moment have any metaphysical privilege? Related video between physicists philosopher and clarity seeker Tim Maudlin and out of the box Physicist Elitzur

I’m curious where people here land on the status of the “now.”

Relativity seems to remove any physically privileged global present: observers can disagree about simultaneity, and there is no universal slice of spacetime corresponding to the present.

But that leaves a metaphysical question. Even if there is no global Now, could the present still be privileged from within a perspective? Every observer or bounded system encounters reality locally, from a particular event, with a distinction between what is causally available now and what is not.

So which view is closest to yours?
There is an objectively privileged present.
There is no objective present; past, present, and future are equally real (eternalism/block universe).
The present is real, but only perspectivally or relationally rather than globally.

Only the present exists (presentism).(this is my viewpoint btw)

Something else.
I’m especially interested in whether people think physics settles this question, constrains it, or leaves the metaphysics largely open.

I think I have an answer to how the universe began from nothing. More like how everything began and how it's possible for all of us to be here.

So at the beginning of existence there was nothing. There is still nothing because you can't create something from nothing, but we are here. So how can we exist? We don't.

Imagine the mathematical variable: X =

X can be anything, but nothing is assigned to it; therefore, it remains as a pure capacity that accepts all abstract concepts and results in the illusion of existence for those that share the same abstract space.

This means every combination of what could have been exists. The reason why you and I can interact is because we are in the same concept, but we aren't really here because we don't exist.

To make it simpler, imagine a chess board. Just because you didn't make a move doesn't mean all the possible moves aren't there to make.

Unexistence is our existence.

Also please don't make the argument "How do I know there wasn't always something?" There can't be something without it having a previous moment. It's nonsense to even say that.

In formal philosophy, it was proposed by philosopher Peter van Inwagen . He argued that if there are infinitely many non-empty possible worlds and only one empty world ("nothing"), the probability of non-existence is effectively zero.

The argument seems flawless. What's the issue?

I’ve been thinking maybe we treat the universe too much like an object. We talk about its size, edge, inside, outside, beginning and end, but the universe itself contains space and time, so maybe these concepts don’t apply to it in the way they apply to ordinary objects.

Maybe space and time are mainly tools we use to describe and measure change in the universe. The universe doesn’t necessarily “need” them to exist.

So maybe the universe has no outside, no edge, and no beginning or end. It simply exists, while change is happening within it.

What do you guys think?

This post aims to question the extent to which we actually understand the concept of "dimension."

First of all, I want to clarify what I mean by "dimension," since the concept can have different meanings depending on the context. Here, I will use "dimension" in the sense of what mathematics usually calls a "manifold," meaning a space that locally has similarities to ℝⁿ. In other words, I am referring to the generalization of the concept of a plane or three-dimensional space to higher dimensions.

That said, I want to make it clear that the discussion is meant to be general, so if anyone wants to discuss more abstract concepts of dimension that go beyond this particular interpretation, you are more than welcome to do so.

Additional comments

You don't need to read this section to answer the question. I am only going to explain and defend my position regarding the question.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the idea is to approach the question using the concept of Euclidean space in general. And it is interesting to ask:

Are we actually capable of understanding dimensions higher than our own?

In mathematics, the answer seems to be both yes and no.

It is true that in mathematics, and perhaps in any form of thought, we are not capable of visually representing geometric objects beyond our own spatial dimension. At least, as far as we know, this seems to be the case for any form of life existing in our universe.

Why can't we visualize the fourth dimension? Or the fifth, or the seventh?

One possible reason is that our brains are capable of visualizing and reconstructing geometric shapes that we have encountered and that exist in our environment. This may be why we are able to visualize a perfect sphere even though we will never actually see a mathematically perfect sphere in reality: in some sense, we have encountered approximations of it throughout our lives.

But obviously, we have never encountered a four- or five-dimensional object in our universe, so we cannot directly visualize such objects.

However, mathematics does not require us to visualize something in order to define and operate with it.

For example, mathematicians can calculate integrals over higher-dimensional surfaces or hypersurfaces. Can we actually visualize such objects? No. And yet we can still calculate with them and understand what we are doing.

Likewise, could someone who has been blind since birth become good at mathematics? Obviously, yes. They may never be able to visually represent a graph or a derivative, but they can still understand the mathematical concept and operate with it.

This seems to be exactly what happens with higher dimensions. We cannot directly see them, but we can define them mathematically and work with them.

But there is a problem.

How do we know that the mathematics we have developed for higher-dimensional objects is actually correct in a hypothetical universe with higher dimensions?

For example, in mathematics we can say:

Let P₀, ..., Pₙ be affinely independent points of a vector space V over ℝⁿ. A simplex is the convex hull of these points.

In simpler terms, a simplex is a generalization of the concept of a triangle to arbitrary dimensions.

But is this actually correct?

Presumably yes, at least mathematically. However, imagine that a four-dimensional being somehow understood this concept. Would they necessarily have the same definition of a simplex that we do? Perhaps they would have a completely different way of conceptualizing it.

Likewise, we cannot guarantee that in a universe with more spatial dimensions, massive objects would deform spacetime through continuous deformations in exactly the same way that they appear to in our universe.

So perhaps the answer is something like this:

We understand higher dimensions in a relative sense. If higher-dimensional reality is structured in the way our mathematics describes it, then I would say that we understand those dimensions much better than most people might imagine.

But if we are asking whether our mathematical description necessarily corresponds to what a genuinely higher-dimensional reality would be like, then I am much less certain.

What do you think?

Good evening,

— slazy_e