Under Construction

Virtualism - The Explanation of Existence

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true - Niels Bohr

Index

Virtualism - types of relationship

Relationships

Wholes and Parts

The Heart of the Matter

Fundamentally Nothing

Necessity and the Mothers

Virtualism - types of relationship

Virtualism is a theory that enables an explanation of everything that exists. It has principles and rules that form the foundational basis for the process of Emergence, which is how things come to be; you could say that Virtualism is Emergence taken to the extreme, such that everything that exists is virtual; it also forms the basis of Iconism, which is a theory that explains consciousness. By enabling explanations of Existence and Consciousness, Virtualism provides a certain platform from which to tackle any philosophical question.

The entire premise of Virtualism is that everything in Existence comes to exist only as a consequence of virtual relationships. It is a response to the unresolved disagreement between those of a Materialist worldview, and those of an Idealist frame of mind. Virtualism is, in this regard, a monist dualism, a combination of two forms that gives four foundational kinds of relationship; a single kind of thing that may appear in four different formats, and from which emerges a multi-faceted Existence that encompasses the limitations of either extreme perspective [Materialism or Idealism], or the unsatisfactory half-way house of Dualism.

Virtualism radicalizes the concept of emergence

Something is virtual when it exists on an 'as if' basis; meaning that the virtual thing is a thing, but that it is only a thing because it has been compelled to exist by the circumstances that forced it to emerge. That is; all things are emergent, i.e. every single thing, of any kind, is a whole thing that comes to exist only because of the parts that made it exist.

All things are individual whole things, and all whole things are only the sum of their parts. That is; the parts of any thing stand in relation to one another, and form a virtual whole that, truthfully, only exists on an 'as if' basis. It is 'as if' the whole were a thing in its own right, but really there are just the parts; although it cannot be denied that there is also a whole thing. This seeming paradox is the phenomena of Emergence, which will be explained more fully later on.

Virtual things emerge whenever a relationship forms or changes between things, but change only ever occurs in response to a situation of paradox. That is; a paradox is a situation whereby two objects exist in a state of togetherness, i.e. in relationship, but also with an element of unresolvable difference. Such is the nature of all relationships - as the saying goes '... can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.'; and every thing that exists is only just such a relationship - the consequence of some change that really was only a paradox in search of resolution.

Some changes are necessary; they must occur. Other changes are only probable. The probable changes are dependent on the probability of paradox developing and then requiring avoidance. That depends on both the internal state of a thing and the external state. Examples of these two kinds of change are momentum and gravitational acceleration. Momentum is there in the shape of an object, and so is a necesssary ongoing cause of change, while gravity depends on many moving objects, and so is potentially variable, and so has an element of probability about it that emerges from the many quantum changes that occur.

Ultimately, all that exists are the facts of the matter, and facts are composed of relationships that are just numbers. The matter exists only 'as if' it is there.

Nothing is fundamental, neither is there any actual ultimate; something more can always emerge while change occurs.

This does not mean that there is no reality, nor that virtual things are just illusions. Virtual things will be truths, i.e. facts, when they are unchangeable, they will be real when they change in response to emergent Time.

For these reasons, Virtualism should not be seen as a version of dualism, although it does admit to the existence of both ideal and real objects. Rather, both ideal and real things are claimed to be virtual, therefore the only kind of thing that can be said to exist is the relationship between things, and any relationship is necessarily virtual, because it emerges from the similarities and differences between the nodes forming that relationship.

Relationships

All things, of every kind have to adhere to the following definitions of relationships:

A relationship is a thing that exists on an 'as if' basis, i.e. relationships are virtual.

A virtual relationship exists between each and every pair of whole things.

Relationships exist whenever there is some difference between things, and some similarity.

A relationship is a thing that has two nodes and a difference between them. The nodes are brought together in relationship by some similarity.

To the extent that both nodes in the relationship are the same, then the overall relationship is composed of sameness.

To the extent that either node in the relationship is different from the other, then the overall relationship is composed of difference.

When the difference between the nodes is null, non-existent, then the relationship is one of identity, and so does not exist as an independent object. Rather, there is just the sameness of a fact that applies to both objects and the relationship - all three are one.

Relationships are anchored within any object by some similarity between some of the parts of that object and a node of the relationship.

The relationships that combine to make a whole thing, always combine to make a heart for that whole thing; a heart that as with a centre of gravity, only exists on an 'as if' basis.

The relationships that form between pairs are complemented by relationships that form between triples. Any such triangular relationships must form a centre that is orthogonal to the centre of each pair in the triangle. In this manner, Emergence is geometrical.

The relationships that combine four objects combine four triangles, but the centres are still four in number, and there is no necessity for them to coincide, unless they form a regular solid, i.e. a tetrahedron, a rudimentary sphere. Similarly, the five Platonic solids are the only 3D objects to have such a centre, and each one can be considered to be a rudimentary sphere.

There is a geometric relationship between the tetrahedron and the twenty sided icosahedron. Also, a different kind of relationship between the cube and the octahedron. These are relationships of inner and outer, but give something quite different because twenty tetrahedrons will fully complete an icosahedron, whereas an octahedron merely fits inside a cube, joining all the face centres and thereby repeating the centre of the cube. From this we could say that the cube to octahedron is an internal relationship - inward looking, whereas the tetrahedron to icosahedron gives an outward direction from a central point shared by each tetrahedron. The relationship between solids were thought by Plato to be fundamental to the platonic elements of fire, earth, air, and water, but his interpretation was very straightforward. What emergence shows is that numbers define platonic solids, and that from the platonic solids emerge relationships that are more than simply numerical, the something new that emerges is this sense of inner and outer; something lacking between the numbers themselves, where each number is both inner and outer.

The ambition of Virtualism, its conceit if you like, is that all things emerge from numbers, and the relationships that extend from numbers do so initially in the form of geometry and Platonic solids. Somewhere in that is the secret that explains how and why a Big Bang came about - a secret that we can know from simply correctly working out the necessary consequences of equally necessary first principles.

Wholes and Parts

All things are whole things. All whole things contain, and are formed from, parts such that the parts must be considered to be 'inside' the whole. Parts are also wholes in their own right. All parts in a whole stand in some relationship of difference from each other, and from the whole.

The Heart of the Matter

All whole things define their own centre, their heart.

The heart is in some senses identical to the whole, in that the heart always emerges from the whole.

Both heart and whole are formed from all the parts of the whole.

Fundamentally Nothing

Emergence is the engine of Virtualism, and the rule is that all [whole] things emerge from a relationship between more fundamental parts that themselves are separated by difference, and the more paradoxical that difference, then the stronger the type of emergence that may be expected.

The consequence of looking at Existence in this way is that ultimately we see that the starting point of everything, the thing that is most fundamental, is in fact simply nothing.

Parmenides may have claimed 'ex nihilo nihil fit' [although in Greek, no doubt], that 'nothing comes from nothing', but Virtualism, in taking a hard line on emergence, one that says everything emerges, claims that Parmenides was mistaken in this one aspect of his theory: Everything comes from nothing!

You'll have to judge for yourself whether you agree with my reasoning, and that the case for Virtualism and Hard Emergence has been successfully made by the explanations on this and the following pages.

Necessity and the Mothers

Necessity may lead to invention, but some needs are voids that are wants, or you could say lacks. Necessity carries the additional meaning that something has to happen, it must occur. In similar vein, we can see that with emergence, sometimes there will be necessary emergence, where the new thing that arises must do so, is forced to do so due to the paradoxical nature of the circumstances, thus resolving [even if only temporarily] the paradox. At other times, the emergence may be in response to a void, which in itself forms a different kind of paradox, one that is less insistent, in which case there is not necessity that change occurs, rather there is a probability that derives from possibility.

The most obvious example of necessary and probable emergence occurs with numbers, where the natural numbers form a repetitive creation and resolution of paradox that almost looks to be alive, while the multiplied numbers, particularly the squares etc. can only form as a probability, that is they may form, but not from necessity.

Emergence is usually claimed to be either strong or weak, which generally refers to the level of novelty of the emergent thing. For instance the murmuration of starlings emerges from their flight behaviour, but does so weakly because it is possible [at least in theory] to deduce the process in operation. Strong emergence is said to occur when the resultant novelty is so radical that no analysis of the parts even hints at the novel property of the whole. There are voices that deny the distinction altogether, claiming that our ignorance does not form a proper distinction. Personally, I would lean towards the spectrum view, where the strongest is fully deterministic, i.e. 100% necessary to resolve some paradox, while the weakest is exemplified by a win on the lottery, it could be you, but maybe it will be no one at all.