Introduction

Ideas at the site http://www.horizons-2000.org have shown our standard secular metaphysics and cosmologies in their best form to present a very limited picture of the universe.

The aim of this brief note is to ‘reconstitute’ a metaphysics for our ‘normal’ cosmos.

Narrative

The universal metaphysics—the universe has no limits—is consistent with what is valid in received knowledge through today. It provides for an endless array of cosmological systems of endless forms (laws)—all against an ill formed background.

The ‘laws’ of any cosmos are woven into the cosmos itself—we discover them but they are already written into the form and structure of the cosmos.

At the level of our knowledge of our cosmos its laws are generally without explanation. The universal metaphysics reveals a universe and explanation.

We do have explanations for our laws but those explanations generally posit things unseen. From the framework of the universal metaphysics we may use those and other kinds of explanations without positing the unseen—the ground of explanation is the universal metaphysics itself which refers to a limitless universe which it found and therefore did not need to posit.

What is the source of the laws of a cosmos? Probably its creation though there may be some input from some external domain. Generally the external domain is the formless so the laws of a cosmos generally will be ‘intrinsic’. There may of course be dual cosmoses (as there may be interacting stars and galaxies) but then we would probably want to refer to the dual as a single—especially if the forms and laws are interwoven.

What is the source of the small scale behavior and its repetition—e.g. the laws of interaction for elementary particles and the marked identity, say, of all electrons? John Wheeler came up with a novel explanation—there is one electron. The explanation from creation is not too different: one kind of formation event for a stable cosmos is so intense—the singularity—as to communicate form among its elements which then move apart but retain the stamp of creation.

Why a law of conservation of energy? Hyper-conservative systems would ‘blow up’; hypo-conservative systems would suffer ‘death’.

Why symmetry? The conditions of stable formation!

Why the difficulty unifying gravity and the other three fundamental forces? Perhaps gravity has an origin in the long range—is systemic—and the difficulty in unification is due to the other three forces being ‘atomic’ in origin.

Why a law of entropy? Perhaps that off-symmetry to a ‘slight’ degree selects for formation of stable forms without frozen perfect symmetry.

The universal metaphysics shows that entropy law effects are not eternal even though they may have dominance in a cosmos at least in some of its epochs. Without doubt any entropy death is reversed well before the ultimate. Is there a local reversal? Perhaps it would involve the systemic force (gravity).

Information and emergence

This section is an aside. It is worth noting that under the universal metaphysics the proposed ‘it from bit’ explanation of the cosmos coming from a primal layer of information due to John Wheeler becomes a definitive ‘it from nothing’ or ‘it from nit’.

In recent physics time and space have been seen as emergent from an information layer. Under universal metaphysics all manifest being is emergent from the Void. Generally, any state—manifest or otherwise—may be seen as the ground for all emergence. (This does not contradict the following comments on non-emergence in normal worlds.)

Mind and normality

Here, normal has nothing in its sense that refers to ‘typical’ or ‘average’ or ‘statistics’. If there is any such content to the normal as it is used here it is contingent on the range of reference.

A substance is forever—it is only the manifestations that change. An exclusive substance is a substance of one kind that excludes other kinds. If matter were an exclusive substance it would be a substance exclusive of mind.

The universal metaphysics shows that there are no true substances of the above kind (or of the other kind as in the substance of particular forms such as the substance of a biological species). However, the universal metaphysics allows local as-if substances. The as-if substance of elementary matter of our cosmos is not a substance but has some behavior as one at least in our epoch of our cosmos.

Practically, the matter of our cosmos is a substance.

If it excludes mind, there is no explanation of mind. Mind is then random in relation to matter. Within the context of the substance-cosmos, emergent explanation is no explanation.

Therefore the elements of mind are already present in matter. This is a pan-psychism which is sub-dominant in the modern explanatory pantheon where emergence is dominant. However, emergence is dominant because it conforms to the secular materialist paradigm and not because of its rationality. Emergence is not irrational but it has no rationality.

This pan-psychism posits no ‘little minds’ inhabiting the elementary particles any more than (pan) materialism posits little Eiffel Towers or little versions of macroscopic properties inhabiting the elementary particles. It argues that since mind is interaction the source in ‘matter’ of ‘mind’ must be interaction—e.g., the forces of interaction—and that what is emergent is degree and complexity rather than mind or Eiffel Tower as such. A fully consistent system may be built up on this account—see http://www.horizons-2000.org for such a system that accounts for the phenomena and resolves the paradoxes of traditional mind-body issues and of modern ‘consciousness studies’.

Logically, it is possible to have a zombie that is exactly you or I but that has no experience (subjective awareness). This does not mean that it is physically possible in normal terms in our cosmos—but it does mean that there is some cosmos, probably of very transient form, where the ‘logic’ plays out; and that there may be fleeting infusions to matter from other worlds of mind into ours.

Barring this, in our cosmos the normal pertains—mind goes to the ground of being (matter).

As noted there are situations where the normal does not pertain. These are permitted and therefore factual from the universal metaphysics. The metaphysics allows mind that does not go to ground. However, we expect that such situations are (a) very transient or (b) become less transient by normalization.

Normal

We expect that on our journey to the ultimate most of our experience will be normal. There will be transients but there will be return to the normal. We will experience the normal as being. That is where we will mostly live. However, the transient is also being—obviously and even though perhaps outside our experience—and crucial to a succession of normal states of being.

I suppose I am suggesting that a normal world is roughly complete in itself—for an epoch and for many purposes. Under this thought the consensus view of the world in the scientific-philosophical community at the time of Newton was not a more or less self sufficient normal picture. Today however when we can see a cosmos, its structures, and life and mind arise organically from an initial singularity we think we have a normal picture—roughly and temporarily complete. This is because the niches of being at least on the material level seem complete and further because we can at least see how apparently non material modes such as mind are in fact material. Going out from our cosmos the furthest reach is the limitless universe. Perhaps there are further normal levels in between and even if not there are—from the universal metaphysics—some cosmological systems that are nested in higher levels on up to the universe.