I agree with you that we don’t know in advance what we can or can’t know, and that we shouldn’t give up. That is why I just said it is “very likely” and in particular “incapable of knowing the answer in any clear way,” not of knowing the answer at all. It seems to me that this is not judging in advance, but we actually have pretty good evidence that we can’t know in such a clear way, namely that people have tried this for a long time and failed, at least in knowing clearly, even if maybe not in knowing at all.
But even there, I agree that we should keep trying and shouldn’t take that as a reason for giving up at all.
-2. Anything you can mention either exists, or it doesn’t. That means that any answer to “why does anything exist rather than nothing” must exist, or not exist. If it exists, it is not an explanation, since the answer in this case presupposes something existing. If it does not exist, it cannot be an explanation for existing things, since there is no such thing (as the thing that doesn’t exist.)
This is not sophistry: it actually proves that in some sense there is no explanation. But it only shows that there is no explanation in a certain way, not there is no explanation in any way. And your coloring suggested to me that you consider it more reasonable for the final explanation to be something non-existing, rather than something existing. That seems unlikely to me—it seems quite a bit more likely that the final explanation will be something that exists. If that is true, it will have to be something that exists “by definition,” since it won’t have something else explaining why it exists. It is true that that could not be a perfect explanation, but we already know (from the argument above) that there is no perfect explanation.
-3. I agree with you about qualia, I am just saying it is very very likely that there are other things besides qualia.
I have another example in obviously true explanation, which looks like this one: “Causality exist without cause”. It is almost the same as “existence exist”. I was satisfied with it for a long time.
But now I think we should make them more rigorous to work. We may ask what kind of objects “can’t non exist”. And starting from it we could name several types of objects which exist anyway (Logic, math, and probably observer and qualia). And now we could try construct from them our reality.
So my point is that we should give definition of existence and see how it works in our case.
Maybe I should consider yellow there and give this explanation.
I agree with you that we don’t know in advance what we can or can’t know, and that we shouldn’t give up. That is why I just said it is “very likely” and in particular “incapable of knowing the answer in any clear way,” not of knowing the answer at all. It seems to me that this is not judging in advance, but we actually have pretty good evidence that we can’t know in such a clear way, namely that people have tried this for a long time and failed, at least in knowing clearly, even if maybe not in knowing at all.
But even there, I agree that we should keep trying and shouldn’t take that as a reason for giving up at all.
-2. Anything you can mention either exists, or it doesn’t. That means that any answer to “why does anything exist rather than nothing” must exist, or not exist. If it exists, it is not an explanation, since the answer in this case presupposes something existing. If it does not exist, it cannot be an explanation for existing things, since there is no such thing (as the thing that doesn’t exist.)
This is not sophistry: it actually proves that in some sense there is no explanation. But it only shows that there is no explanation in a certain way, not there is no explanation in any way. And your coloring suggested to me that you consider it more reasonable for the final explanation to be something non-existing, rather than something existing. That seems unlikely to me—it seems quite a bit more likely that the final explanation will be something that exists. If that is true, it will have to be something that exists “by definition,” since it won’t have something else explaining why it exists. It is true that that could not be a perfect explanation, but we already know (from the argument above) that there is no perfect explanation.
-3. I agree with you about qualia, I am just saying it is very very likely that there are other things besides qualia.
I have another example in obviously true explanation, which looks like this one: “Causality exist without cause”. It is almost the same as “existence exist”. I was satisfied with it for a long time.
But now I think we should make them more rigorous to work. We may ask what kind of objects “can’t non exist”. And starting from it we could name several types of objects which exist anyway (Logic, math, and probably observer and qualia). And now we could try construct from them our reality.
So my point is that we should give definition of existence and see how it works in our case.
Maybe I should consider yellow there and give this explanation.