(status: metaphysics) two ways it’s conceivable[1] that reality could have been different:
Physical contingency: The world has some starting condition that changes according to some set of rules, and it’s conceivable that either could have been different
Metaphysical contingency: The more fundamental ‘what reality is made of’, not meaning its particular configuration or laws, could have been some other,[2] unknowable unknown, instead of “logic-structure” and “qualia”
To the limited extent language can point to that at all.
It is comparable to writing, in math, “something not contained in the set of all possible math entities”, where actually one intends to refer to some “extra-mathematical” entity; the thing metaphysics ‘could have been’ would have to be extra-real, and language (including phrases like ‘could have been’ and ‘things’), being a part of reality, cannot describe extra-real things
That is also why I write ‘unknowable unknowns’ instead of the standard ‘unknown unknowns’; it’s not possible to even imagine a different metaphysics / something extra-real.
(status: metaphysics) two ways it’s conceivable[1] that reality could have been different:
Physical contingency: The world has some starting condition that changes according to some set of rules, and it’s conceivable that either could have been different
Metaphysical contingency: The more fundamental ‘what reality is made of’, not meaning its particular configuration or laws, could have been some other,[2] unknowable unknown, instead of “logic-structure” and “qualia”
(i.e. even if actually it being as it is is logically necessary somehow)
To the limited extent language can point to that at all.
It is comparable to writing, in math, “something not contained in the set of all possible math entities”, where actually one intends to refer to some “extra-mathematical” entity; the thing metaphysics ‘could have been’ would have to be extra-real, and language (including phrases like ‘could have been’ and ‘things’), being a part of reality, cannot describe extra-real things
That is also why I write ‘unknowable unknowns’ instead of the standard ‘unknown unknowns’; it’s not possible to even imagine a different metaphysics / something extra-real.