On Logic and Alternate Universes

[Edwardo Piet]

Our universe would be a little enclave of logic within a larger, absurd, reality...If, in some other chunk, some other set of rules existed....would it be sensible or useful to call those rules logical rules?

I don't believe so. The kind of principles we seem to be calling logical rules are those sorts of principles that would be considered absolutes. Either they are necessarily so or they are not. If there is anywhere that "our" absolutes don't hold then clearly they are not necessarily so. And if they are not necessarily so then they aren't really absolutes, are they?

Nice scare quotes. Because they're not really our logical rules, because they're absolutes, they apply everywhere, in the entirety of the totality of all existence: not just our universe, but all universes. That's why they're called logical absolutes. Exactly right.

As my sig says, hypotheticals and tautologies themselves, and everything else both potential and actual, absolutely everything, real or imagined: it's all based on the law of identity, not the other way around. Universes are based on the law of identity, not the other way around.

Why are two things and two things four things? Not many people know how to answer that. WHY are two things and two things four things? I know the answer: two things and two things are four things because two things and two things and four things is just the same thing expressed differently. 2+2=4 because 2 +2 means 4. We could define it differently, but that would just to be label the laws differently rather than change the laws themselves.

2+2 and 4 are the same thing. So 2+2=4 just means 4=4. Or A=A. It's all just the law of identity labelled differently. Because two things to the left of me and two things to the right of me is just another way of saying "four things either side of me, half on the left and half on the right", there is no sense in any universe in which two things to the left of me and two things to the right of me could be three things to the right of me and two things to the left of me.... if an extra thing popped into existence to the right of me, then that's irrelevant. It would simply mean that there was in fact three things to the right of me and two things to the left of me, so it would be 2+3 =5 not 2+2=5. 2+2 can't =5 unless you redefine and relabel things. CD already demonstrated this without realizing it by talking about different bases. So it was kind of funny when he then agreed with me saying that we're talking about the laws themselves, not their concepts, after he'd just talked about different conceptualizations and languages like base 3 and base 10 etc, lol. And then he jumped to talking about an extra thing popping into existence, lol, which, again.... it doesn't work like that. That makes no sense. That's just an extra thing popping into existence. You have to hold yourself to the words you use. If we're talking about other universes we have to do it in our own language.