Post #309583

An artist in Athens Ohio wrote a song called the soon-to-be-world-famous-pancake-song. You will hear it someday. You all will. That's just the nature of the soon-to-be-world-famous-pancake-song. Every month or so I re-post my soon-to-be-world-famous work of rogue philosophy. There's a lot of dingbattery about, and even more wingnuttery; and I count wingnuts and dingbats as family and friends. This is not that; but... how would you know that? So: I challenge you to enjoy this in two parts, with two different mindsets. The first half is old-school metaphysics, arguing that, if the universe-writ-large is free from all constraints (be they Gods or Laws of Nature), the reflexivity of identity (i.e., *A=A*) is never instantiated in the physical world. That's a sort of ontic vagueness - but a very special sort, with a very precise character: that reality cannot exhibit any of the characteristics that entail the reflexivity of identity (i.e., self-identity). The second half is not old-school metaphysics, but speaks to those physical implications: if reality cannot exhibit the reflexivity of identity, what else does that eliminate? (Meaning, what else is reality NOT like.) In fact, I believe this approach can help us understand why reality appears constrained and provides a possible means to approach some of the fine tuning questions. That's not the sort of thing one expects in #philosophy these days; it's an unusual approach. I hope every month a person or two will give it a read, and I'll find someone who can help render this soon-to-be-world-famous tangle of ideas into something as digestible as the soon-to-be-world-famous-pancake song. with love to the fediverse ... Adam https://zenodo.org/records/14674036