Infinity Versus the Meta-Energy Puffs
Actually written OCTOBER 23, 2022
AGAINST NOTHING AND INFINITY
I been tryin’ to rid my metaphysics of “nothing” and “infinity”.
A metaphysical “nothing” is a self-contradiction. And that’s basically why I been so anti-nothing.
But “infinity” is a different story. At least it seems different to me at the moment. It doesn’t seem strictly self-contradictory to me.
Objectivists say infinity violates identity. If so, then it would be self-contradictory. And I could proceed as usual to rid it from my metaphysics.
So how is it that infinity makes it impossible for anything to be what it is, and thus to simply be?
Does infinity demand that any given thing be what it is not? Or, that the thing not only be what it is, but be something else additionally?
INFINITY CONTRADICTS SIMPLES
Well, maybe infinity contradicts the possibility of metaphysical “simples”, the basic, indivisible, most elemental existents. There could be no such simples because they could be subdivided into more sub-simples, infinitely. We would never bottom out at some ultimate simples. So infinity makes a hash out of the very idea of simples.
SIMPLES VERSUS COMPLEXES
So now the question is whether existence is even possible without simples.
Can an existent be something other than a simple?
What is the alternative to a simple?
The only alternative that comes to mind would be a “complex”. And, intuitively, I think of a complex as something comprised of parts. And the parts could be simples.
INFINITY REQUIRES COMPLEXES BUT PROHIBITS SIMPLES
So what infinity demands is that everything is complexes, comprised of more complexes, infinitely.
Initially this strikes me as the metaphysical analog of the epistemological theory of coherence, that the meaning of any word comes, not from a correspondence with some metaphysical object, but from its use-relation with other words. It’s like the identity of any given thing is not some indivisible item, but is so tangled up in the identities of everything else that it cannot exist without everything else. It cannot be whatever it is without “existential support” from everything else. Well, it seems sorta like that. But not precisely. This kind of entanglement still does not violate identity the way infinity might.
I support this kind of metaphysical entanglement. (I’ve thought of it as the “metaphysical soup”.) Just because the parts are entangled does not mean each part is not what it is, that each part does not exist. The fact that no existent can exist in isolation from everything else does not mean it cannot exist at all.
But is the infinite regress of complexes compatible with the metaphysical soup? Is the regress of complexes just a specific example of the soup?
There’s a difference in the type of entanglement here, I guess. My original notion of the soup is that it entangles every simple with all other simples. And there’d still be a finite number of these simples. But complex regress entangles every complex with every of its sub-complexes. And there’s an infinite regress of these complexes.
AGAIN, INFINITY CONTRADICTS SIMPLES
So you can see here that I have set this up such that infinity depends on the impossibility of simples, and the existence of simples depends on the impossibility of infinity.
So I will proceed to explore the validity of infinity under that framework.
But first, I want to rehash what’s at stake here.
IF INFINITY IS IMPOSSIBLE
If infinity is impossible, it means that continua are impossible, continua such as time and space. Time and space would be illusions, relational forms of experience that we mistake for intrinsic properties of existence. My phrase “relational forms” here means the forms as intended by Objectivist philosopher David Kelley when he expounds on the distinction between form and object. The form is the way the object appears, the appearance generated by a causal interaction between the object and the mind that experiences the object. The idea here is that time and space are the way existence appears to our minds, an appearance produced by the causal interaction between existence and our minds. More specifically, I like to think that time and space are our forms of experiencing difference. Our minds experience difference by arranging it into a structure created by our minds, that structure being the continua of time and space. Difference, in turn, is just a corollary of the fact that existence is not one single “monolithic” thing, but is instead a plurality of parts, each one different from any other. Difference is the corollary of identity, which is in turn the corollary of existence in the context of its having parts. (I explore this further in my writing called "Against Metaphysical Continua".)
Ok, so back to the possibility of infinity.
THE GREAT MEREOLOGICAL BIFURCATION
On my gut urge to invalidate infinity, I tried to come up with an argument against its possibility. And the first argument I came up with depends on a model of existence and its parts that I call “the great bifurcation”. The great bifurcation is the idea that existence has only two mereological levels: just one “whole”, and one level of parts. The whole is the entirety of existence itself. It is the big “whole”, and the only “whole” that actually exists independently of how any mind experiences it. The parts are the simples. And they are the only parts that exist independently of how any mind experiences them. Again, these are the only two mereological levels that actually exist. There are no sub-assemblies between them. No sub-wholes. No sub-parts. The obvious appearances of sub-assemblies is again, another form of our minds experiencing differences in the structure of the simples.
THE GREAT MEREOLOGICAL BIFURCATION CONTRADICTS INFINITY
The great bifurcation contradicts the metaphysical reality of nested complexes, whether or not the nesting is infinite and does not bottom out at simples. There’s only one complex, the complex of the entirety of existence, the big whole. There’s no sub-complexes / sub-assemblies and so on.
And so, if infinity depends on an infinite regress of complexes and sub-complexes, then the great bifurcation has deprived infinity of what it depends on.
I'M NOT CERTAIN OF THE ARGUMENT FROM THE GREAT BIFURCATION
Well, such is my argument from the great bifurcation. But how valid is the great bifurcation? I don’t know. There’s tons of details to work out to even know whether the great bifurcation can be valid. I lay awake at night pondering just some of these details and find that I just don’t know enough about mereology to make headway into it all. One thing that seems especially tricky is how consciousness is possible under the great bifurcation. Presumably, consciousness is a structure of simples capable of experiencing other structures of simples as unified into the differentiated structures it can discriminate. Well, maybe. Perhaps some simples simply are conscious – no structure required. Oi! So anyway...
So let me depart my pursuit of invalidating infinity for now and say something interesting about Ayn Rand here.
RAND'S META-ENERGY PUFFS AS THE SIMPLES
According to Leonard Peikoff (Rand’s intellectual heir), Rand once whimsically imagined the kind of simples I am aiming at here. She called them “meta-energy puffs”. Meta-energy puffs are simples that generate the appearance of physical matter and the continua of time and space that physical matter occupies. Here Rand allowed for time and space to be our form of experiencing existence, whereas time and space are not intrinsic to the existence so experienced. This is described on page 45 of Leonard Peikoff’s book, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
I am proposing a meta-energy puff hypothesis as a serious candidate for a metaphysical theory. For all I know, Rand herself may have taken it seriously too.
[Cue: John S. Hall & Kramer - Things]
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