The Great Debate

Those are all valid curiosities, that every thinking human has pondered. I lean toward the here and now, so questions of the distant past (Big Bang) or distant future (Omega Point) don't really interest me. I find #1, #2 and #3 to be particularly important. When we consider existence, order, life and consciousness ... it is a mystery ... and we tend to develop a headache ;-) This is because as humans, we are looking into the wrong end of the telescope, because of our Western intellectual history. Without humans, no human question is even conceivable. So I consider humans to be axiomatic. We are conscious, and as part of consciousness we derive that we are living. In studying physical nature, we derive that physical nature is orderly ... it has a lot of turbulence, but it isn't complete chaos. Having followed the path of reductionism, the questions get increasingly abstract and hard to pin down. We are left holding the bag, the bag of existence vs non-existence.

In deductive science, particularly in ancient geometry, we try to discover very simple and fundamental facts, that we can then use to derive the rest of what we see in the discipline in question. These fundamental facts which we base deduction on. come from human beings, from out of our psychological processes. Humans are "a priori" not "a posteriori" ... to spin Immanuel Kant in his grave ;-). In short, I agree with Descartes ... as my avatar did back in his day ... Baruch Spinoza was the first modern Jew, and some say, the first really modern man.

In metaphysics, we start from a whole subjective perception, and study its attributes. In maths and physics, we start from objective sensations, and study their controlled combination. The first is synthesis, the second is analysis. Both are just tools, and each tool is good for particular problems, but not good for others. There is no philosopher's stone that can solve all problems in one go. As a technical person, I employ rationalism and physicalism (modern materialism) to solve mathematical and technical problems. But in a larger sense, as a human being, I employ irrationalism and non-physicalism to solve human problems.

My MO in regards to reality ... as a former Cold Warrior and son/grandson of WW II and WW I

1. We are alive, and sometimes conscious ... aka psychology applies.
2. What it is like being alive and conscious, is we have an "interiority" ... the non-living (and by extension non-conscious) in addition to an "exteriority".
3. What it is like being alive and unconscious, we will pass on for now
4. This combination "interiority" and "exteriority" means we have a personhood. That is our primary reality as a living conscious creature.
5. As a person, I have some degree of free will. I can choose to clinch my fist. Those three words don't apply to stones: clinch, my, fist.
6. As a person, the questions of "who" and "what" both apply ... for a stone, only "what".
7. As a person, the questions of "why" and "how" both apply ... for a stone, neither of those do.
8. However, "where" and "when" apply to both myself and a stone.
9. My conclusion about atheism is that it is a psychological syndrome where a person has become de-personalized. They become an "it" to themselves, maybe others become "its". Per Martin Buber, this is a crucial aspect of pathology in all its forms.
10. That is why 20th century political atheism was so dangerous, both the explicit and implicit kind. The Nazis were implicit atheists, they despised human beings, while claiming to be Christian. The Communists were explicit atheists, they despised human beings while claiming to be atheist. It doesn't matter to me what the ideological claims were, those are window dressing compared to the psychology. Mere excuses for pathological thought and behavior.

Ideally models are created to mimic reality no?

That's not true, sometimes models reveal truths, confirm truths or refutes truths. Substitute the word truth for belief or hypothesis. A more terrestrial example are car accidents or hit and run. X are the parameters the known is the resting place of the car and skid marks, blood eyewitness reports and so forth. The model can be used to fill in X...how fast the car was going, pavement conditions, braking and steering. On a grander level they used a model to determine how much dark matter there is by virtually upping the amount of gravity until it visually matched real galaxies.

A general metaphysical model, a psychological model of reality. I have both interiority and exteriority. But I am not alone. My combined interiority and exteriorly constitute a microcosm. The other living humans are their own microcosm. But we are not isolated, every microcosm is connected to every other one. This unity constitutes the macrocosm. When we synthesize, we are thinking in terms of the macrocosm, when we analyze we are thinking in terms of the microcosm. All human knowledge, whether subjective (interior) or objective (exterior) is more or less mutually dependent. One can't define a word, without using other words. Subjectivism emphasizes the interiority of the human experience, but objectivism emphasizes the exteriority of human experience in general, but what exteriority we all share in particular. The law of gravity is something exterior, and we all share it. It doesn't apply to our interiority, it isn't necessarily operative in our dreams.