.Probabilities .Give me six of one… What is the probability that, rather than being the producer of intelligence, the physical world is the product of intelligence? I will argue that the odds are just about even, a priori. But, come to think of it, it looks like they are not even – not even close.
There are only two mysteries in the world. Why does it exist? Why do we exist? If these two mysteries are in any way related, then it is almost certain that the world is an artifact.
Let’s put these questions another way. Why does anything exist? Why is anything known to exist? Any correlation between these two questions would lead to the same conclusion as above.
Is it possible that nothing would ever exist? Might that not require something to prohibit anything from existing? Thus the prohibition would exist. It would seem that something is bound to exist. But if anything existed, then what would prevent everything from existing?
I am partial to the view that everything does exist, and that the world is where it sorts itself out, under the transcendental logic of love. That logic is the closest that we get to the notion of an absolute God.
It is not the atoms that sort themselves out, but rather the experiences of atoms. I suggest that it is much more probable that an experience exist than something exist purely unto itself. An experiencing is a priori more probable than a thing.
Positing the existence of something is a piece of logic. The logic must exist prior to the thing, logically. ‘Existence’ is a word that must be defined. How can we suppose that something exists without a notion of existence?
We can posit the existence of an unobserved planet, or even an unobserved universe. But that is not a real planet, that is a hypothetical planet. If it were subsequently ‘discovered,’ how would we know that it was not actually an artifact of the instrumentation, theories, logic, history and teleology that was attendant upon its ‘discovery,’ just like everything else in our dream world? What would make it any more or less real than the million-digit prime number that we may discover? How will you decide if it is more rather than less real than the prime number?
None of this is rocket science, yet these are basic questions that have somehow been lost sight of in our rush to embrace materialism. It looks like we have some homework to do. And from whence comes our fascination with matter? Surely someone must have spiked this punch.
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rev. 1/27/99