COSMOLOGICAL AND METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMIC CATEGORIES

Raphael Neelamkavil,

Ph.D.(Quantum Causality), Dr.phil. (Cosmogenetic Causality in Cosmology)

[email protected]

These metaphysical Categories have been developed as a part of a wider project. Here in the present document I discuss only the Categories. This is in view of obtaining feedbacks too.

1. Basic Metaphysical Categories: Extension, Change (Set 1)

We take the cosmos as part of out-there existent Reality-in-total, not of non-existent or doubtfully existent possible worlds that are creations of counterfactual thinking in literature, art, logic, analytic metaphysics, probabilistic aspects of quantum cosmology, etc. Existence is the minimal condition for the possibility of any feeling, thought, imagination, discourse, etc. What exists behind these experiences need not be exactly what we do in these experiences. Existence is a purely meta-metaphysical a priori, not like any epistemological a priori as in Kant and many others, say, space and time.

Everything in the cosmos exists in Extension, and hence are composite, having parts. Everything exists in the state of Change, i.e., every part, part of part … moves at least finitely. Naturally, this is by impact-transfer of elements from within outwards.

It is impossible to effect an exclusively inward causation through a single unit motion (impact-transfer), because every unit Change involves at least a little motion, which can only be outwards. What supposedly is inward motion is in fact from one inner part to another inner part – hence, the impact-transfer is in fact from one part of a part to another that is outside it. Nothing exists without these characteristics.

The allegedly “non-causal” quantum-physical “processes” (alleged by many, whose number today dwindles constantly) are often taken as non-causal because of statistically circumscribed measuremental requirements and their admixtures effected in quantitively determined equations. Such an interpretation arises in statistical thought from the theoretical compulsions and results extracted and extrapolated epistemically out of the mathematics, because the causal nature of all existents is not the same as the number of causally directly discoverable elements and sub-processes within a processual existent.

If these allegedly non-causal substances do not represent something belonging to the processes of Extension-Change-wise existents and are in fact presented basically as the exact epistemic spatio-temporal representations resulting from our probabilistically measuremental “procedures” – say, in the indeterminacy principle, double slit experiment, velocity of light, EPR paradox, quantum-cosmologically vacuous creation of new matter and/or energy, etc. – they can only remain theoretical constructs good for theoretical filling of deficiencies in the capacity of humans to measure and observe. (See my [2014] and [2018].)

Without commitment to the Extension-Change-wise processual existence and activity of the so-called quantum objects “out there” beyond any probabilistic circumscription, no physics and quantum cosmology can exist. If, for example, the mathematically particle-type, wave-type electromagnetic entities do not exist in Extension-Change, or somehow exist only by being identical to its probabilistically determined and hence separate particle- and wave trajectories in temporally variegated instances, the whole micro-physics and other branches of physics dependent on micro-physics would collapse.

If not in Change, nothing exists in Extension alone, and vice versa. That is, Extension and Change are the two general-ontological (metaphysical) Categories of all processual existents, including energy wavicles (finite Extension-Change) and God (infinite Extension-Change). Hence, any mathematical formula declaring electromagnetic wavicles as separately or simultaneously wave and particle would fail all realism, imagination, and the real significance of probability theory as the attempt to measure what are difficult to measure due to the complexity of the objects under search.

A more primary consideration is the existence of electromagnetic wavicles as wavicles, where their mathematically recognized particle-like and wave-like paths get adjusted with each other in the probabilistic measurement of the existent wavicle. Is it not natural that we can only measure ensembles of extremely minute existents and make statistical and probabilistic predictions out ensembles? Without obeying the metaphysical law of Extension-Change-wise existence of processual things in activity-stability (which is the same as Causality), no process can be real, nothing can exist.

If Extension-Change-wise existence is the primary metaphysical structure of beings, then space is the measuremental shape of Extension (not of stability, but of having parts, compositeness, compositionality); time is that of Change (of activity, of impact-transfer). Therefore, space and time are merely the measurementally conceptual, epistemic categories, based respectively on the metaphysical Extension-Change Categories. Space or spatiality is not a measure of stability, because stability is the maintenance of the measure of activity within a being – not changelessness.

Clearly, epistemic spacetime cannot curve. Physical-ontological Extension-Change trajectories – measured spatiotemporally – of physical processes can curve to various extents in many ways, because physical existence within the cosmos implies finite activity and stability. What curves physically is not the geometrical trajectory, but the process’s Extension-Change. Zero and infinite activity-stability are not permitted in the irreducibly finite Extension-Change-wise curvature as in the case of electromagnetic, gravitational, and other propagations, and the finite spacetime curvature available in the processes in the cosmos. Therefore, the only remaining possibility regarding the Extension-Change curvature in God is infinity – philosophically and mathematically a very potent conclusion.

2. Derivative Categories: Causality, Process (Set 2)

All impact transfers (Change) are within and between a finite number of entities in the cosmos. All of them are in Extension, i.e., compositionality, by the very essential nature of the primary Categories of all existents. Hence, impact transfer in extended existence is the activity-stability (not merely stability) type existence called “Causation”. Hereafter, therefore, Causation is not a synthetic a priori. It is nothing but the metaphysical and physical-ontological Category of all experience and discourse. Literally knowing the cause or the exact cause in each case of experience is not what is implied here. That is merely an epistemological impossibility. That everything is metaphysically is the ultimate fact behind all science and philosophy.

If every part of everything is causal, everything is processual within and outwards. What is processually impact-transferred in Extension-Change is the causal part proper; and the transformed impact is the Extension-Change-wise existent process termed the effect part proper. Their difference is spatio-temporal, when considered epistemically as measuremental. Considerations of spatial and temporal differences separately are epistemic abstractions for practical purposes.

The causal part proper and the effect part proper are physical-ontologically existent as unique in every part of the whole of Reality and unrepeatably self-same so that no member of a natural kind is the same as any other member. Since causal action involves motion, nothing can act inwards, although there are inner actions and motions within everything existent. Thus, the mereological outwardness of causation is a strict law.

When we say that Causation is in every part of existents, it includes even energy wavicles since they too should first exist, exist in Extension-Change, not vacuously, for them to be treated in physics. This reduces all quantum physical probabilistic causation into a name for the epistemic limit-situation of science. Today probabilistic causation is found at the subatomic and energy wavicles level, and after an epoch it will be shifted to a smaller level.

This does not mean that every part of the cosmos is connected to every other part of it. This is impossible, because anything physical can only have finite activity-stability. There cannot be a realized future (i.e., finitely distant from us) moment in which the whole cosmos becomes a totalized and infinitized psyche or a God, merely because an infinite future is required for finite activity-stability to turn into an infinite one. For reasons based on the outward and non-simultaneous nature of Causation, there cannot be an eternal return of the Same, too. Such conclusions, say, in Nietzsche (partially), some Vedāntins, some scientists converted to holding omnipotent and omnipresent cosmic consciousness, many panpsychists, and most New Age type scientists, philosophers, and spiritualists, is a mere romanticising of wisdom. This is clear from the above discussions. This blocks also the reduction of the cosmos or the pan-psyche into a sort of God.

Extension-Change-wise causation is physical-ontologically present in all existents. Exactly and totally the same causal elements as in one process cannot as such inhere in other processes. The relation of one impact-transfer process to the later constitution of an Extension-Change-wise self-transformed process (existent relatively independently or within another process) is Causality. Every existent is causal, since existence is by nature exclusively Extension-Change-wise in activity-stability.

The relation within a causal process, between the causal and the effect parts, is universally applicable to all existents. This is the Universal Law of Causality.

If non-causal processes exist or are generated in continuation with the one causally processual entity, the former lose all contact with causal processes that are before and after their occurrence. That is, non-causal existents cannot any more be connected thereafter with any other for the former part of the process to result from the latter part under consideration. Hence, names of non-causally understood quantum-physical processes are theoretical misnomers of probabilistically epistemic constructs representing otherwise fully causal impact transfers. (See my [2014].) In any case, statistics and probability determine things in terms of approximations of various kinds regarding existents, and not by considering a priori that anything of which all the causes are not detected or detectable must therefore be non-causal existents.

Causality as a relation between processes and causation as the activity within and between processes pertain to impact transfer within existents in Extension-Change, not in mathematical or probabilistic space-times. In general, without direct reference to the causal (relational) aspect, and with direct reference to the entity-aspect as something in activity (activity-process), one says denotatively: Everything is in Extension-Change, i.e., is a process. Any one unit of the causal and effect parts is a process. Adjectivally this means: “Everything is processual”. Thus, with reference to the relational aspect, the relation ‘Causality’ is derived directly from “Extension-Change”.

‘Process’ denotes an existent entity, because anything existent is composed of non-vacuous somethings in activity-stability. The term is derived denotatively from the relation ‘Causality’ and the action or activity ‘Causation’, which are represented as existents with respect to their minimum components, i.e., a unit comprising the causal element/s and its proper effect element/s. One (causal) process is a set of one causal element/s and one effect element/s. ‘Causation’ as a term is an instance of denotation of activity. ‘Process’ and ‘processual’, respectively, are substantive and adjectival denotations: the manner of definition alone differs in accordance with discursive contexts. All entities are in process: to put adjectivally, they are processual, causal.

3. Derivative Categories: Activity, Stability (Set 3)

Processual entities are characterized also by the Categories of Activity and Stability. These are subservient to Extension-Change. Pure vacuum is absence of Activity and Stability. Thus, existent entities, irreducibly, are active-stable processes. Physical entities, as processes, possess finite activity and stability.

Activity and Stability together belong to Extension; and Activity and Stability together belong to Change too – they do not belong separately. That is, Stability is not merely about Extension and space. Activity is not merely about Change and time. Many philosophical traditions even today tend to hold the contrary erroneously. Activity and Stability are admixtures of Extension and Change; hence they are derived Categories. To add to the list, there are the derivative Categories Set 4, namely, Conservation, Attraction-Repulsion, etc., and a few most general functional and logical principles – I do not elaborate upon them here in the introductory chapter.