I understand that morality and physics are different, but I think you might underestimate the connection. My personal epistemology says that in order to avoid an infinite regress we need to place some sort of foundation on our concept of what is true or not. I use my internal values as this foundation, and only consider a concept to be true or meaningful if that concept achieves my values, whether directly or indirectly. I don’t think this is as unreasonable as you like to portray it.
Concepts which do not pay rent do not exist for me; I don’t bother wasting my time or cognitive space pondering their existence or nonexistence. Believing in the existence of physics outside the Cosmological Horizon doesn’t do anything useful for me, because it doesn’t lead me to make any new predictions about what my experiences will be. The only reason it would possibly matter to me is if I valued peoples’ existence as an abstract thought rather than as a tangible interaction. Even then, I don’t think it would deserve the status of a truth, it would be more of a convenient fiction that it makes me feel happy to believe in.
When you talked about future societies that have to deal with problems related to the horizon, and said that those societies would need to have a rule saying they should believe in the existence of people beyond their horizon, that is what I felt was conflating convenient societal convention and individual morality.
I understand that morality and physics are different, but I think you might underestimate the connection. My personal epistemology says that in order to avoid an infinite regress we need to place some sort of foundation on our concept of what is true or not. I use my internal values as this foundation, and only consider a concept to be true or meaningful if that concept achieves my values, whether directly or indirectly. I don’t think this is as unreasonable as you like to portray it.
Concepts which do not pay rent do not exist for me; I don’t bother wasting my time or cognitive space pondering their existence or nonexistence. Believing in the existence of physics outside the Cosmological Horizon doesn’t do anything useful for me, because it doesn’t lead me to make any new predictions about what my experiences will be. The only reason it would possibly matter to me is if I valued peoples’ existence as an abstract thought rather than as a tangible interaction. Even then, I don’t think it would deserve the status of a truth, it would be more of a convenient fiction that it makes me feel happy to believe in.
When you talked about future societies that have to deal with problems related to the horizon, and said that those societies would need to have a rule saying they should believe in the existence of people beyond their horizon, that is what I felt was conflating convenient societal convention and individual morality.
You keep saying that. I still reject the premise. This is not a correct usage of the local jargon “pay rent”. Use a different phrase.
What predictions are you lead to by these concepts?