GENIUS FORUMS

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-Gurrb-
Who is to say the tree even fell, but instead was always like that?

-tomas-
Had a job in a pulp processing plant in Northern Minnesota (way back when). I've also sawed down a few trees at that job (and in my day). The tree definitely yells "bloody murder!" when it is being slayed. When I get off Genius and back to real life will be writing on some old tablet paper that was once a tree (poor feller) in Minnesota.


-Gurrb-
We can truly question everything that exists, and can never be sure on anything.

-tomas-
I woke somewhat refreshed this morning.


-Gurrb-
Every answer can be questioned just as every question can be answered. (except for the sophist's way of tricky phrasing)

-tomas-
Denial is the sincerest form of flattery. (except for the second or third year student at a university)

dejavu wrote:

Nick: The Totality is incapable of possessing form by definition,

No, the universe possesses endless form.

Form can not exist without bounds, therefor the idea of "endless form" is completely illogical.

dejavu wrote:

so it doesn't really mean anything to say it exists if by exist we mean to appear like all finite objects do.

No, the universe exists in every sense. It appears, and appears, and appears...ad infinitum.

If by universe you mean The Infinite, it can not appear by definition. It is a logical consequence relative to how A=A and causality work. But please, if you have what it takes to move beyond your ambiguous and trite persona, do explain how The Infinite appears to us.

dejavu wrote:To imagine it ends with, or is born of consciousness, is purely that--- an imagining.

If you were paying any attention you would already know that I said The Infinite is formless, meaning it has no beginning or end, nor is it ever birthed.

dejavu wrote:

It gives rise to the things that do exist, the Totality itself does not, yet we are always experiencing it.

What you mean by "the totality" is really infinity, and the reason we are always experiencing it is because it exists.

We experience it through The Finite which it gives rise to. (see my request for an explanation above)

Nick Treklis wrote:

Loki wrote:

at any moment we can change the boundaries of something by redefining it in an infinite number of ways.

Can you do this with the hypothetical speck? Please demonstrate.

It's not changing our perception that's important, it's changing our conception that means everything here. And as I've explained over and over there is literally nothing stopping us from endlessly changing our conception of things if we choose to do so. Just because something presents what appears to be a static image does not mean we can't change our conception of it.

Ok, this strikes my interest. Can you give me some examples of conception? And how can we know the varieties of conception are infinite? I seem to be stuck on perception, as I always thought perception is what is important.

Loki wrote:What about the totality? Doesn't that exist?

The Totality is incapable of possessing form by definition,

How do you know your definition of the totality is correct? Maybe it's donut shaped? All things flowing round and round creating a donut like tunnel.

so it doesn't really mean anything to say it exists if by exist we mean to appear like all finite objects do. It gives rise to the things that do exist, the Totality itself does not, yet we are always experiencing it.

the totality may not appear in it's entirety (I do see how that's impossible), but it is a very real thing, and it may ultimately have a form, even though we can never see it.

if the universe is infinite, then everything within it must be too. infinity divided by infinity is infinity. it's like watching someone who is watching someone watch someone watch someone... the universe is being watched, the universe is watching. the universe is forever exploding, while simultaneously all its components are imploding. we view the universe as something that is infinitely large, but too is infinitely small. i do agree boundaries can be redefined by an infinite amount of ways. my body is view as a separate entity of yours based solely on perceptual boundaries. we could break these boundaries by stating that all matter is matter, and it is broken further down into arbitrary sections.

we too must be infinite to understand that which is infinite.

can something exist if it does not cease to exist?

Loki wrote:Ok, this strikes my interest. Can you give me some examples of conception? And how can we know the varieties of conception are infinite?

Take The Solar System for example. We can conceive of it any number of ways. We can conceive of it as just the Sun and the planets, or we can say it also includes all the asteroids and "space junk" floating around, or we can include or exclude all the "empty space" between the things I just mentioned. Same thing goes for trees and if we conceive of it as just the trunk, branches, and leaves, or if we conceive of it as not just the trunk, branches, and leaves, but also the roots, the animals and parasites that make the tree their home, the soil that provides it with nutrients, the rotting branches and leaves that fell off the tree and the new forms of vegetation growing out of that, and the air surrounding it. There is nothing stopping us from defining things, and thus conceiving them in any number of ways.

Loki wrote:I seem to be stuck on perception, as I always thought perception is what is important.

Have you read David Quinn's book "Wisdom of the Infinite"? If you haven't I highly recommend it, and if you already have, it doesn't hurt to pour over it again once in a while. Dan Rowden is also in the process of making a three part series titled "What is the Infinite" on his Youtube channel "Men of the Infinite". Part one can be found here. You should check it out.

Loki wrote:How do you know your definition of the totality is correct? Maybe it's donut shaped? All things flowing round and round creating a donut like tunnel.

Loki wrote:the totality may not appear in it's entirety (I do see how that's impossible), but it is a very real thing, and it may ultimately have a form, even though we can never see it.

The Infinite is a logical consequence of how A=A and causality work. Form can only be attained when it has something to contrast itself with, and all forms are part of the same whole. Thus The Infinite is whole that binds them, yet the whole itself can never appear.

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things

Thus, constantly free of desire
One observes its wonders
Constantly filled with desire
One observes its manifestations

These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders

dejavu wrote:

Nick: Form can not exist without bounds, therefore the idea of "endless form" is completely illogical.

*Applause* Nick realizes the illogic of infinity!

The Infinite is not "endless form". You have no idea what you're talking about.

dejavu wrote:

If by universe you mean The Infinite, it can not appear by definition.

lol You would have it appear all at once? How could it? It's infinite. This does not mean it doesn't appear, it just goes on appearing.

The Infinite never appears, neither in part nor whole. I'm still waiting for you to stop giggling long enough to lay out your reasoning.

dejavu wrote:You leave me no option but to be trite with you Nick, but ambiguous?! lol

You can blame me for you shortcomings all you want. It only shows you have a lot of growing up to do.

dejavu wrote:Infinity is not formless. Take any form as proof.

I already know your use of the word infinity has nothing to do with The Infinite, so you'll have to explain exactly what you mean by it, and why it has form.

dejavu wrote:And you did actually imply its coming of consciousness when you wrote: ” if no mind is conceiving a thing, then that thing doesn't actually exist.”

See, this is why I know you are lost. The Infinite is NOT a thing, things are finite, they require bounds and limitations which is how they gain their form. Seriously, go back to the drawing board and start with A=A.

dejavu wrote:

dejavu wrote:What you mean by "the totality" is really infinity, and the reason we are always experiencing it is because it exists.

We experience it through The Finite which it gives rise to.

No kidding. It’s as though you possessed genius!

Saying we experience The Infinite through the finite is not the same thing as saying The Infinite exists. But please, I'd love to see you try and point out this "infinity" of yours!

Gurrb wrote:if the universe is infinite, then everything within it must be too. infinity divided by infinity is infinity. it's like watching someone who is watching someone watch someone watch someone... the universe is being watched, the universe is watching. the universe is forever exploding, while simultaneously all its components are imploding. we view the universe as something that is infinitely large, but too is infinitely small. i do agree boundaries can be redefined by an infinite amount of ways. my body is view as a separate entity of yours based solely on perceptual boundaries. we could break these boundaries by stating that all matter is matter, and it is broken further down into arbitrary sections.

we too must be infinite to understand that which is infinite.

They may be using the term as a negation of finite. Where finite is the equivalent of boundedness, the infinite is that which is not bounded. This is different from a regressive type of infinity.

As regards the tree falling in the woods I regard it this way; if we are asking whether or not the tree makes a sound when no one is around to hear it, I wonder are we asking if it makes a "sound" in terms of our phenomenal sense of hearing or as regards a wave-form. There are different ways of perceiving a "sound", auditory as well as visually. I suppose the real question is: does the tree even exist?

I haven't read all of this thread, however I've payed attention to the last few pages of discussion. It seems to me there is a disagreement over whether or not reality exists in the absence of conscious observers. I think this problem can be solved in part by thinking of the relative way in which time and space are perceived by conscious entities. Novice musicians have difficulty keeping up with higher beats per minute, while pros can actually perceive more time occurring between the notes. This happens with any profession, our first day on the job is chaotic and as we improve our perception of events time feels as if its slowing down. A boring day can make our day drag on, and an exciting day goes too fast. "Life is short" has to be the most popular saying amongst the elderly, paradoxically contrasted by "You've got your whole life ahead of you!". It seems, when we are young we perceive time as plentiful with a slow progression, but as we age and build up our memories with which we relate our time, it speeds up and appears less abundant. In various experiments it has been demonstrated that people in free-fall perceive time slower than usual.

It is interesting to note from this that the perception of time is relative to the circumstances of the observer. What then of the case where no observer is present? Its as if the mind smears out time and space to suit its own purposes and in the absence of that there is no difference between a second and a minute, or an inch and a mile. To even begin speaking of a tree falling in a forest, therefor is to presuppose a particular conceptual framework, within which all the normal elements of our shared perception. The fact that we know a tree fell in the forest means that it probably made a sound. The issue of whether or not reality exists in the absence of an observer is purer, I'd say not by any sense of perception which is what we would need in order to describe such a reality. Everything in the past could have happened instantaneously up to the point of the first observer. In a flash, like when you feel like you've woken up after just falling asleep but in "reality" 5 hours have passed. I think the trick is, the evidence of what happened is always there and we can easily assume it took 5 hours for us to get up since the time we passed out. But that again is relative to our whole shared perception of time. I know at least my perception of time is a bit off from the norm.

dejavu wrote:

the meaning of the riddle though, the whole point being the restriction to one sense to make a general point.

That being the question of whether something exists if its existence is not apprehended.

Or when its existence or non-existence becomes relevant to apprehend. And that starts with becoming aware of a sound, even when it's just a slamming of our head against it, a TV documentary, an abstract formula and so on. You can always turn it into a sound frequency by some conversion...

If you grant that the universe is infinite, then you grant infinite variation in form.

Infinite only means the lack of beginning and end, any lack of boundaries. It doesn't say anything about quantities or content unless one sticks ones head in mathematical sand.

Being finite, it is not a question of actually ‘knowing’ the infinity in variation, but of understanding there is no other possibility.

There's no way to know if there's no upper limit somehow to the amount of variation. That's why your idea is not an absolute truth but more a sort of mental masturbation: verdammte Spielerei!.

The Universe has an end, but the end it growing outwards, therefore it is infinite until it stops growing. The smallest material is invisible, not sure I can imagine dividing the invisible. It is still invisible when magnified, and is always invisible.

Nick Treklis wrote:

Loki wrote:Ok, this strikes my interest. Can you give me some examples of conception? And how can we know the varieties of conception are infinite?

Take The Solar System for example. We can conceive of it any number of ways. We can conceive of it as just the Sun and the planets, or we can say it also includes all the asteroids and "space junk" floating around, or we can include or exclude all the "empty space" between the things I just mentioned. Same thing goes for trees and if we conceive of it as just the trunk, branches, and leaves, or if we conceive of it as not just the trunk, branches, and leaves, but also the roots, the animals and parasites that make the tree their home, the soil that provides it with nutrients, the rotting branches and leaves that fell off the tree and the new forms of vegetation growing out of that, and the air surrounding it. There is nothing stopping us from defining things, and thus conceiving them in any number of ways.

But aren't conceptions dictated by our perceptions? In other words, don't we have to see something first before we conceive of it? Moreover, tree trunks, branches, leaves, soil, rotting branches, these "conceptions" are indeed the result of using the mind to carve up the appearance of nature, but how can I really know if this carving can go on infinitely? I suppose if we treated our appearances like we do numbers, then we could use math to prove the infinite. But that's not what you mean, is it.

Loki wrote:I seem to be stuck on perception, as I always thought perception is what is important.

Have you read David Quinn's book "Wisdom of the Infinite"? If you haven't I highly recommend it, and if you already have, it doesn't hurt to pour over it again once in a while. Dan Rowden is also in the process of making a three part series titled "What is the Infinite" on his Youtube channel "Men of the Infinite". Part one can be found here. You should check it out.

I've read Quinn's book a couple times and I watch MOTI regularly. While certainly stimulating, I feel like I'm being fed doctrine and beliefs. I don't get the sense that anything is really getting proved. I am hungry for proof.

Loki wrote:How do you know your definition of the totality is correct? Maybe it's donut shaped? All things flowing round and round creating a donut like tunnel.

Loki wrote:the totality may not appear in it's entirety (I do see how that's impossible), but it is a very real thing, and it may ultimately have a form, even though we can never see it.

The Infinite is a logical consequence of how A=A and causality work. Form can only be attained when it has something to contrast itself with, and all forms are part of the same whole.

I understand this very well, but I don't see how you can make the leap to assume that "the whole" is infinite.

Thus The Infinite is whole that binds them, yet the whole itself can never appear.

But Nick, just because the whole can't appear, doesn't mean it's infinite.

isn't existing a boundary of sorts? if the infinite represents that which is not bounded, then it cannot exist based on this. true that it is not bound in the sense that there is no end, and there never will be an end. wouldn't that which has no boundaries be able to cross over to that which is its 'opposite', in this case the finite. for the infinite to have no bounds, it must be able to become finite. paradox.

dejavu wrote:
Pincho:

The Universe has an end, but the end it growing outwards, therefore it is infinite until it stops growing. The smallest material is invisible, not sure I can imagine dividing the invisible. It is still invisible when magnified, and is always invisible.

Growing outwards into what? I realize you're trying to account for motion, but...an end?!

Growing outwards into its membrane. Imagine a sink full of oil, you drop water into the oil, and it makes a hole. The universe is the hole in the oil, the oil is its membrane. We live in the hole, we can't penetrate the membrane. The membrane is infinite, but it isn't the universe, we can't live in the membrane.

i'd imagine that more of a galaxy to universe analogy.

Gurrb wrote:i'd imagine that more of a galaxy to universe analogy.

The Galaxy, Universe is the same, but a galaxy bubble is weak, so it can be penetrated. The Universe bubble cannot be penetrated. But you are right that it is all a fractal.

Loki wrote:But aren't conceptions dictated by our perceptions? In other words, don't we have to see something first before we conceive of it?

Well, even though we are both perceiving the same reality, we appear to have different conceptions of it. So much for our perceptions dictating our conceptions.

Loki wrote:Moreover, tree trunks, branches, leaves, soil, rotting branches, these "conceptions" are indeed the result of using the mind to carve up the appearance of nature, but how can I really know if this carving can go on infinitely? I suppose if we treated our appearances like we do numbers, then we could use math to prove the infinite. But that's not what you mean, is it.

Why couldn't it? What's to stop me from defining half of a proton as a tree, or defining the Milky Way Galaxy as a tree? It may not be very useful under the circumstances, but it can be done none-the-less.

Loki wrote:I've read Quinn's book a couple times and I watch MOTI regularly. While certainly stimulating, I feel like I'm being fed doctrine and beliefs. I don't get the sense that anything is really getting proved. I am hungry for proof.

Well like I said, in matters such as this, nobody else is going to be able to prove it for you. All anybody else can do is point. It's up to you to satisfy your own hunger.

Loki wrote:But Nick, just because the whole can't appear, doesn't mean it's infinite.

If the whole is unbound, has no beginning, no end, can not be conceived of in any way, shape, or form, and is the source of a potentially unlimited number of all things finite; what else would you call it?

Pincho Paxton wrote:The Universe has an end, but the end it growing outwards, therefore it is infinite until it stops growing. The smallest material is invisible, not sure I can imagine dividing the invisible. It is still invisible when magnified, and is always invisible.

Pincho Paxton wrote: Growing outwards into its membrane. Imagine a sink full of oil, you drop water into the oil, and it makes a hole. The universe is the hole in the oil, the oil is its membrane. We live in the hole, we can't penetrate the membrane. The membrane is infinite, but it isn't the universe, we can't live in the membrane.

The "smallest" material is really the source of the 'universe' and the source of its growth. The universe seems to be growing into a "second" source that will create its own universe. The membrane would be its 'infinite' potential, but the infinite is invisible...

What happens to the first source?

divine focus wrote:

Pincho Paxton wrote:The Universe has an end, but the end it growing outwards, therefore it is infinite until it stops growing. The smallest material is invisible, not sure I can imagine dividing the invisible. It is still invisible when magnified, and is always invisible.

Pincho Paxton wrote: Growing outwards into its membrane. Imagine a sink full of oil, you drop water into the oil, and it makes a hole. The universe is the hole in the oil, the oil is its membrane. We live in the hole, we can't penetrate the membrane. The membrane is infinite, but it isn't the universe, we can't live in the membrane.

The "smallest" material is really the source of the 'universe' and the source of its growth. The universe seems to be growing into a "second" source that will create its own universe. The membrane would be its 'infinite' potential, but the infinite is invisible...

What happens to the first source?

We live in the Aether which expands like a bubble with a membrane. The bubble bursts every so often at the golden ratio. The hole in the bubble then inflates another bubble. Eventually you have a billion bubbles, but now they are compacting on one another, and the centre bubbles have no room to escape from the crushing forces. The centre bubbles become so small that they explode from pressure. All sorts of things happen now. Bubbles are forced inside other bubbles, energy is released, photons, and electrons shoot through the membranes, the bubbles become so dense that they are now solid matter, the solid bubbles now have enough weight to move through the Aether without stopping, they have mass. The Aether is an amazing material, all of the oncoming events of matter colliding with matter eventually creates everything. All of this is inside this membrane which is being forced outwards, breaking, and then being forced outwards through the hole. The hole works like a pipe, which aims all of the pressure into one spot.. that's a Black Hole eventually, and all of the pressure is forced into the Black Hole. The Black hole eventually gives in to the pressure, it gets super hot, it glows it creates vortex through the hole. The vortex inflates the next bubble, and breaks down the membrane. Eventually the membrane is expanded to break again. The vortex pressure is now released, and the vortex becomes a sun. The matter becomes a Galaxy at the centre of the bubble. The spacing of Galaxies is the spacing of the bubbles. sometimes you can even see the bubbles through the Hubble Telescope. There are many pictures of them, all you have to do is to know that they are there, and then search google.

Nick Treklis wrote:

Loki wrote:But aren't conceptions dictated by our perceptions? In other words, don't we have to see something first before we conceive of it?

Well, even though we are both perceiving the same reality, we appear to have different conceptions of it. So much for our perceptions dictating our conceptions.

The reason we have different conception is because we have different perceptions.

Loki wrote:Moreover, tree trunks, branches, leaves, soil, rotting branches, these "conceptions" are indeed the result of using the mind to carve up the appearance of nature, but how can I really know if this carving can go on infinitely? I suppose if we treated our appearances like we do numbers, then we could use math to prove the infinite. But that's not what you mean, is it.

Why couldn't it? What's to stop me from defining half of a proton as a tree, or defining the Milky Way Galaxy as a tree? It may not be very useful under the circumstances, but it can be done none-the-less.

Sure it can be done, but can't you admit that there's the chance you could run out of things to do? How many different combinations can you arrange reality in before you run out?

Loki wrote:But Nick, just because the whole can't appear, doesn't mean it's infinite.

If the whole is unbound, has no beginning, no end, can not be conceived of in any way, shape, or form, and is the source of a potentially unlimited number of all things finite; what else would you call it?

I just don't have a reason to consider it "unbounded". I see the matter within the universe to be potentially finite. And I also can imagine the universe emerging out of nothing and dying into nothing, so it would have a definite beginning and end.

In other words, why can't the totality be simply a finite bubble of space-time? Such a bubble might have grown from nothing, and could die into nothing.

Pincho Paxton wrote:The "smallest" material is really the source of the 'universe' and the source of its growth. The universe seems to be growing into a "second" source that will create its own universe. The membrane would be its 'infinite' potential, but the infinite is invisible...

What happens to the first source?

We live in the Aether which expands like a bubble with a membrane. The bubble bursts every so often at the golden ratio. The hole in the bubble then inflates another bubble. Eventually you have a billion bubbles, but now they are compacting on one another, and the centre bubbles have no room to escape from the crushing forces. The centre bubbles become so small that they explode from pressure. All sorts of things happen now. Bubbles are forced inside other bubbles, energy is released, photons, and electrons shoot through the membranes, the bubbles become so dense that they are now solid matter, the solid bubbles now have enough weight to move through the Aether without stopping, they have mass. The Aether is an amazing material, all of the oncoming events of matter colliding with matter eventually creates everything. All of this is inside this membrane which is being forced outwards, breaking, and then being forced outwards through the hole. The hole works like a pipe, which aims all of the pressure into one spot.. that's a Black Hole eventually, and all of the pressure is forced into the Black Hole. The Black hole eventually gives in to the pressure, it gets super hot, it glows it creates vortex through the hole. The vortex inflates the next bubble, and breaks down the membrane. Eventually the membrane is expanded to break again. The vortex pressure is now released, and the vortex becomes a sun. The matter becomes a Galaxy at the centre of the bubble. The spacing of Galaxies is the spacing of the bubbles. sometimes you can even see the bubbles through the Hubble Telescope. There are many pictures of them, all you have to do is to know that they are there, and then search google.

Nice.

But, so the original membrane is sill there, so the first bubble has two? Would there be a first bubble?

Loki wrote:The reason we have different conception is because we have different perceptions.

Only slightly, but overall we see the world the same way, we have the same basic physiology after all. Take for instance December 25th; everyone basically perceives it the same way, yet Christians conceive of this day very differently from how I do. With their belief that a mythic savior was born on this day, the son of which is another conception I don't adhere to that they call God the Father. They believe this day to be sacred and holy. Myself, I see it as no more or less significant than any other day.

Loki wrote:Sure it can be done, but can't you admit that there's the chance you could run out of things to do? How many different combinations can you arrange reality in before you run out?

I can certainly run out of useful conceptions and meaningful arrangements, but ultimately all things can be divided any number of ways with the mind, and I can create new finite conceptions indefinitely, so long as I remain conscious and choose to do so. Of course, no matter how many conceptions I come up with, there will always be that which I never end up conceiving, except by calling it "The Hidden Void".

Loki wrote:I just don't have a reason to consider it "unbounded". I see the matter within the universe to be potentially finite.

What we conceive of as matter may indeed be finite; that doesn't really concern me. The important thing to understand is that all things finite, everything we can ever conceive of, is part of the same inconceivable whole.

Loki wrote:In other words, why can't the totality be simply a finite bubble of space-time? Such a bubble might have grown from nothing, and could die into nothing.

This nothing you conceive of from which all things came, and to where all things must go, is definitely a something, otherwise no thing could come of it, and it wouldn't be a place where things could go.

divine focus wrote:

Pincho Paxton wrote:The "smallest" material is really the source of the 'universe' and the source of its growth. The universe seems to be growing into a "second" source that will create its own universe. The membrane would be its 'infinite' potential, but the infinite is invisible...

What happens to the first source?

We live in the Aether which expands like a bubble with a membrane. The bubble bursts every so often at the golden ratio. The hole in the bubble then inflates another bubble. Eventually you have a billion bubbles, but now they are compacting on one another, and the centre bubbles have no room to escape from the crushing forces. The centre bubbles become so small that they explode from pressure. All sorts of things happen now. Bubbles are forced inside other bubbles, energy is released, photons, and electrons shoot through the membranes, the bubbles become so dense that they are now solid matter, the solid bubbles now have enough weight to move through the Aether without stopping, they have mass. The Aether is an amazing material, all of the oncoming events of matter colliding with matter eventually creates everything. All of this is inside this membrane which is being forced outwards, breaking, and then being forced outwards through the hole. The hole works like a pipe, which aims all of the pressure into one spot.. that's a Black Hole eventually, and all of the pressure is forced into the Black Hole. The Black hole eventually gives in to the pressure, it gets super hot, it glows it creates vortex through the hole. The vortex inflates the next bubble, and breaks down the membrane. Eventually the membrane is expanded to break again. The vortex pressure is now released, and the vortex becomes a sun. The matter becomes a Galaxy at the centre of the bubble. The spacing of Galaxies is the spacing of the bubbles. sometimes you can even see the bubbles through the Hubble Telescope. There are many pictures of them, all you have to do is to know that they are there, and then search google.

Nice.

But, so the original membrane is sill there, so the first bubble has two? Would there be a first bubble?

Everything is in pairs. There was the first membrane, which is paired with its cells. It should look a lot like Dragon Fly Wings, but all black.....
http://microbeauty.blogspot.com/2009/08 ... -wing.html

Nick Treklis wrote:The nature of appearances (the finite) and the Totality (the infinite) are intertwined. The simplest way to express this would be to say that we can potentially carve the Totality into an INFINITE number of FINITE appearances. Understand this and you understand everything. What say you?

I'm going to answer your question even though you addressed it to someone else: I say that this understanding is simplistic and naive; not only does it fail to properly address the primary existential questions, but even in its narrow scope it fails to recognise the significance of intrinsic differentiation; it fails to distinguish[*] between conceptualisation and perception; and it fails to acknowledge the differences between each of the five senses and their effects upon our consciousness. As an understanding of everything it is very poor. I won't elaborate on any of that in this post though, because I instead want to address a more fundamental problem with your notion of infinite divisibility as absolute truth.

Before continuing, I want to note as Loki noted that if your carving-up paradigm is correct then any finite object can likewise be carved into an infinite number of finite appearances, which makes this a poor reason to refer to The Totality alone as The Infinite.

To continue, I'll explain what I see as one of the main problems with your contention that all appearances are infinitely divisible. I understand that to you, everything that occurs within and to conciousness is an appearance: the five senses, thought, recollection, emotion, etc. Please tell me, then, how a smell can be "divided infinitely"; how a thought can be "divided infinitely"; how an emotion can be "divided infinitely".

For a thing to be infinitely divisible, it must exist on or in some sort of continuous medium: the medium must be continuous rather than discrete so that arbitrary points can be chosen for the division to continue indefinitely and to infinity. Now, you might be able to find a way to explain how smells, thoughts, and emotions exist on or in some sort of continuous medium, but I think that you'll have a difficult job of it.

You could appeal to time, and contend that each of these varieties of appearance occurs along the continuous medium of the time dimension, but if appearances truly are infinitely divisible, then we should be able to pick an instant of time and continue to divide the appearance at that instant. This is because these appearances are all different in nature from one another, so that that which they have in common - duration - cannot point to the sole medium by which they exist, and they must therefore be subject to some other kind of medium(s) than time. I can't see what those mediums might be for the types of appearances that I listed though.

The only type of appearance that I can see this process of infinite division potentially working for is spatial appearances: those appearances that result from our tactual, visual and auditory sensing of the "outside world". I'll explore the spatial paradigm in more detail below your next quote.

[*] Lack of distinction is common in the QRS approach: to take two examples, a variety of distinct phenomena are grouped indistinctly under the single banner of "causality", and femininity is considered to be indistinct from unconsciousness. In fact, adherents of the QRS approach see this as a strength and not a weakness: academics are derided for their (supposedly excessive use of) categorisations.

Loki: But stop right there for a second. How do you even know for certain that something can be infinitely indivisible? Isn't it possible that I could divide, divide, divide, and then finally be left with two indivisible particles?

Nick: I think we talked about this before. I told you that whether or not we ever figure out how to "physically" divide something doesn't matter. What matters is that we can always mentally divide an appearance in half, then we can mentally divide that half in half, then divide that half of a half in half, ad infinitum, hence The Infinite.

Nick, you have it backwards: it doesn't matter what you can do mentally if the physical world doesn't conform to your mentations. As I explained above, the mental process of division that you describe can really only be applied to continuous spatial mediums (or to time, which can be subjected to a similar analysis so here for clarity I'll focus solely on space). This is a problem for your absolutist perspective because your understanding of three-dimensional space and its continuity is an abstracted conceptualisation of how the physical world seems to work, but we cannot truly know that this abstraction of the physical world is in fact accurate and valid. How are we to know that this abstraction of physical reality is not subtly flawed, such that an unintuitive hypothetical like the one that Loki posed is actually possible? Since Einstein's theory of relativity, space has been viewed by physicists as other than a mere static three-dimensional structure: according to that theory it is inextricably linked with time and is warped by gravity. This shows that our intuitive mental conceptions of three-dimensional space do not necessarily correspond to the actual physical world.

Unless you have access to knowledge denied me, then we don't truly understand the nature of space: what is it that causes this apparently continuous medium within which we can conceptualise the abstract entities of "points", such that no matter how close two points are to one another, there is nevertheless a finite distance separating them? Is this really the case with the physical world, or could it be that in some weird way, space is not continuous but is really discrete, such that it is possible to place a point next to another point such that the two points actually do touch one another? This is unintuitive and seems to be impossible, but how can we be so sure that our intuitions are accurate; how can we be so sure that reality is not stranger than fiction in this case?

I understand that you don't believe that the "physical world" exists in the conventional sense, and that you believe that it exists only as an appearance in the mind. If you intend to use that as a rebuttal to what I've written above, then my response is that in denying the existence of an external reality other than the "formless hidden void", you reduce your mental division of appearances to a personal trick, with no claim to absoluteness: if this whole three-dimensional paradigm through which you manipulate appearances by dividing them up is just an "appearance" in your mind, with no external referent from which it was abstracted, then who's to say that other minds do not or can not operate by different variants of this paradigm (such as Loki's reducible-to-indivisibility paradigm) - variants that likewise have no external referent? If this is the case, then why should Loki preference your paradigm over any other that he or anyone else might invent?

If you really do want to go down the path of declaring, "the physical world is merely an appearance in the mind", then your understanding reduces into a subjective perspective, and not absolute truth, as Carmel alluded to in her post on A=A.

I'll summarise my points just to be sure I'm getting them across: there are some types of appearance that don't seem to exist on or in a continuous (i.e. infinitely divisible) medium; for those for which a continuous medium is imaginable (i.e. spatio-temporal appearances), we cannot be sure that what we imagine corresponds to physical reality, and if it is contended that there is no physical reality to which our imaginings must conform, and that "it's all in our minds", then we cannot claim those conceptual imaginings to be absolute truth - the "infinitely divisible" spatio-temporal medium that we imagine is itself just another subjective appearance.

human cannot imagine, or accept, that the universe would simply stop. it is supposed to be what surrounds us, what defines our existence. if it were to simply stop at one point and be finite, then what would that translate to the human mind... we are just a meaningless species. the universe is supposed to represent what is to be explored, what is to be learned. knowledge is infinite, so we assume the universe too is infinite.

in terms of the universe ceasing to exist, well, we will never know if this is true. how can we tell if the universe is finite? once it ends, we end; consciousness ends. we take comfort in thinking the universe is infinite because thinking otherwise would only cause needless worrying.

as for me, i think if something is infinite, all things within it are infinite. if the universe is infinite, then the soul must exist, for it must live on forever occupying different bodies. as for the bodies, they decompose, but all their parts will never die, just be transport and changed in form.