People have, forever, been killing, dying and giving up their lives for labels such as justice, freedom, democracy, power and so on?

Maybe it's the concepts at war with each other? Communism vs capitalist; tyranny vs democracy; right wing vs left. Maybe we're just pawns to warring concepts?

Relations are also 'merely concepts' yet there's decent evidence to suggest that the chunk of land where Russia is is north of where Mongolia is regardless of whether there's minds to claim it is. This is not only the case for geographical relations. All relations are mind-independent, yet they exist. So are adjectives. Perhaps, so is justice, democracy and so on. Nominalism is not my cup of tea.
Can you provide a list of examples of all things that are non-contingent (whatever that means)?

The nature of concepts are therefore in order and in reality calls for the nature of thinking.

If I am walking through the woods and come upon a tall brush and note that the branches quaver in disturbed manner and quickly following, a pheasant flies out of the brush I have made a "causal" connection through my thinking.

Therefore. the pheasant "caused' the bush to quaver.

What I have done is brought the "concept" causality to bear on the event and in this I gain knowledge. If I do not "think" at the time of the event the event, and the world around me, becomes and is, a disconnected gestalt of unconnectedness which only becomes clarity once I bring thinking into action.

What has happened is that through "thinking" the external event which is not complete is merged into the reality of knowledge with the arrival of "thinking". What we see, hear, taste, etc.. with our senses is only one half of the "real" and the human being breaks his sensory perceptions out of the grand or large gestalt and through thinking brings knowledge forth for himself and others.

In other words knowledge or what one will call the reality is not our first sensory perceptions but only the completion of the "real' through thinking. We see one half of the real and through thinking we complete the issue through our creative thinking ; Man stands within the exigent "real" with his ability to "think".

You mentioned the "concept", in your first post as no more than a "made up" thing and espoused the world of nominalism , or the name of our sensory projection or the "concept" having no reality , a mere tool to pragmatic thought .

The "concept" is that very "idea" noted in Plato's "forms" to which the individual man reaches through thinking and brings forth in his knowledge process. The "concept" isn't "made up" but within the realm of thinking and thought forms which are "concepts".

The "concept" of a horse is that which thinking brings to a man who translates it into his individual language. In Plato's "realm of ideas " is the "concept" horse to which the individual man brings into himself and this individual concept , within man, becomes his "mental picture'. the individual concept of horse, for the individual man, is his mental picture.

The "idea" horse, becomes an individualized concept within the individual man and becomes his mental picture.

Somewhere in the writings of Goethe he spoke of the "archetypal phenomena", or the "idea" horse to which we, in our sense bound reality, see one side of the issue with the other side being this conceptual "idea" of the horse.

We are in the supersensible when we "think" but thinking is not the creation of each and every man but is given to us through grace as we travel through the supersensible world.

"In thinking I experience myself united with the stream of cosmic existence."

Another look is that when I see the "horse" I am not seeing the full reality but I can glean that the combination of the "concept horse" and my sensory reality or "percept" horse, which are together prior to my search for knowledge are broken apart and then brought together by my organism as I think.

We see one half of reality and the real is appreciated by men through thinking. I would say that the perception of the horse has as its backbone the concept horse which in the real holds it together for us. Percept and concept are undeniably indivisible except through thinking to which we gain knowledge in bringing them back together again.

We live through the "grace of thinking" and each of us rides thinking as the sensory element of cosmic realities. Thinking is a "sensory" process, a supersensible activity to which we all can in some measure entertain , each to his own strengths. lol

Or you interpreted his question wrongly. Physicists are attempting to understand this thing, not some other thing.

They are not only trying to understand how stuff works but why stuff is the way it is. One can't just have any arbitrary set of laws. There's a lot to be learned about what limits a set of physical laws (certainly the very existence of humans limits the kinds of laws that a universe can have in which humans can exist). Given that it looks like all the forces might be unifiable that puts a huge constraint on the initial conditions or how universal laws evolve.
Here's a fun excecise: What is 'north'?
(Hint: all physics books work just as well if you replace every mention of magnetic north with magnetic south and every mention of positive polarity with negative polarity. North/south/positive/negative are just label-conventions)

I'll let Terry Pratchett take this one:
Just because some thoughts tug at our emotional glands doesn't make their content real.
The map is not the territory.

You're not actually addressing any of the criticisms put up against nominalism.

Do you agree that there is evidence of interactions and relations between objects (e.g., planets) before there were minds? If yes, where do those relations exist?

The question was - why is there something rather than something else? Not why is the world the way it is?

That aside I neither agree nor disagree with your statement. It was a running theme throughout "A Brief History Of Time". Stephen Hawking states that physicists tend to focus more on how and not so much on the why. The book ends with, the idea that when physicists have a grand unified theory, scientists, philosophers and common people alike can then spend time pondering about why. In other words we would still have things to think about.

String theory (will turn out to be found untrue eventually, imo) posits 10^500 possible universes so the laws of each would be unlike the laws of another as a natural consequence, nothing arbitrary about it. That is the multiverse scenario that Stenger states exists as a brute fact. That something exists as a brute fact, as those who believe in various Gods claim, explains why there is something all by itself.

But, then again, he also says 'I know of no method by which we can determine an ultimate reality.' Still fun to talk about, though.

Sure. It's a perfect argument for why delineating things into individual objects is just something we do because we're limited in our mental capacity. The universe doesn't delineate this from that . So when you're talking about interactions you're already missing the point.

A sort of interesting answer timestamped here:
https://youtu.be/CQAcLW6qdQY?t=783

It seems unlikely to turn out simply false in the black and white sense. Any serious contribution to knowledge never turned out to be a waste of time historically. This is why I am always first to defend the ancients.

Brian posted a valuable article once, written by Asimov, that I bookmarked.
https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscie...ityofwrong.htm

That's one way of looking at it. They HAVE churned out a lot of math and different ways of looking at things but I don't think they're going to find a rabbit down the hole they've jumped into.

Nor does any non-absolutist. The hole/journey is the point. Pun intended.

I spoke about the conclusions of A Brief History of Time above, from memory since I left my copy in my parents and read it years back. Then I found it online:
http://www.fisica.net/relatividade/s...ry_of_time.pdf

It is clearly silly.

The brilliance is found within everything before it.

This is a common new-age exercise in the misuse of the noun - universe. Rocks as a collective don't delineate either; this doesnt mean that one rock is not delineated from another. The universe as a collection of things doesn't delineate. This doesn't mean that the things aren't delineated.

So where does oe end and the other begin? Does e.g. the electric field of the atoms of one (or the gravitational attraction which basically extend to infinity) not belong to the rock?

This is a little too vague to answer properly. If you could point to which two rocks you're referring to perhaps a physicist could give you an answer.

In any case it raises interesting questions about interconnectedness.

Disease and a heathy human body are also interconnected. Doesn't mean I'd consider them as one. The functions or behaviours of any given thing help to differentiate it from another. So does its location in space and time. If things are sufficiently differentiated, as per my disease example, it's a lot less clear whether they are one.

It is impossible for things not to be interconnected, yes. That would require the existence of nothingness - inbetween objects/things.
Nevertheless interconnectedness doesn't necessarily imply one-ness. Is a serial killer really just one with humanity? These nuances matter. It is unclear that that which goes against the grain is part of the grain.

Well a physicist will tell you that the wavefunction goes out to infinity. So there's no actual/natural border.

We need to keep in mind that we are (evolved) animals that use brains. Brains are limited and are (again evolved) to be useful with minimal energy expenditure (that's basically the way an evolutionary advantage is defined)

So what do our brains do? They cluster things into concepts because it's a lot less energy intensive to have a label like "rock" and be able to apply this to a gazillion such objects we see instead of having to remember "this is a rock", "this is a different kind of rock", "this is another kind of rock", etc.

Classification is useful (in an evolutionary sense). It shears away variations that make no difference to our survival. But there's really no two things that are the same in a natural sense - not even two hydrogen atoms because they will differ in position (but overlap in wavefunction).

We really need to be aware that there is a difference between useful (to us) and real. (And I say this as a past scientist (not physicist, but EE and CS). science deals with what is useful. for example you can prove that there will never be a provably complete theory of everything. We may find a theory of everything that we never find an exception to - but we'll never be able to prove that it's correct.)

Masque? How does physics define the border between one rock (e.g. earth) and another (e.g. Mars)?
There's variation in rocks. We notice that. We also notice the similarity in a set of objects - rocks. We label them rocks due to their similarity to one another.

The point I was making earlier is that relations between things, such as the relation - similar to/different than - exists; undeniably. The question is - where does it exist? It can't exist only in the mind and it certainly doesn't exist as an object in the world, such as a rock. It doesnt exist subjectively or objectively. So where? The answer to this is very important.
Correct, but importantly, there are two or more things that are similar enough to be grouped together.

I'd say just because there is variation there is something. The half-way between earth and Mars is different from the cores of the planets, so be it a probability function or something else.

Based on convenience for the task at hand.

Exactly. Similarity. Not equality. We cluster based on a subjective(!) criteria. (E.g. what's the size where rock isn't rock but gravel or sand? or a boulder?)

I deny that things exist as separate entities - other than in your subjective view. The universe is one (thing). So interactions don't exist as something separate because they are already part and parcel of the whole.
Yup. Some religions/philosophical schools of thought actually got something right. I'm as surprised at this as anyone.

That we treat things and interactions as separate is besides the point. That's just useful. There's a difference between 'useful' and 'true' (the map is not the territory).
Newtonian gravity is useful in a huge number of situations. It isn't 'true', though. Einsteinian gravity is better (neither is it 'true', either, because we already know of situations where its math breaks down. E.g. inside a black hole)

We treat things as separate and having interactions with each other just so we can get a grip on small subset of the universe and have an advantage in surviving in it. Our minds aren't evolved for anything more.
Only by subjective convention. Not by some 'natural' identity.

The "intellect" separates entities as per example the Periodic Table of the Elements. Another example is a "tree" which is evidently connected to the air, earth and water but the "intellect" separates the entities and one can say that "reason" brings the entities together .

This doesn't imply that one should be able to say "all is one" for the work is to show the connections which are reality other than some type of "pantheistic" swoon.

The use of the word "subjective" is misleading for in this the protagonist attempts to deny the human ability to find any meaningful glimmer of the good and the true.

Its true, these efforts come through the individual man, or the "subject" as apposed to the "object" or "percept" but this only displays an ignorance of the nature of "thinking".

"Thinking" is not owned by any man for we all ride the same thinking as our neighbors. Just as air is not owned by the individual man one thinks through the power of "grace given thinking" , as is air, a gift to which the individual man can pursue the universe of the good and the true.

Coming from the opposite look, if "thinking" were "subjective" then each of us would no longer be able to be in harmony with our neighbors . It would be a cataclysmic existence in the world of "subjective " beings.

The soul of Man thinks, feels and wills. In thinking he gathers truths of cosmic events common to all men.

As he "feels", he brings this knowledge into himself and in this his feelings become "subjective" , so to speak. The knowledge of a flowery field into my life arouses a feeling of awe while another may have the feeling of distress due to allergy. .The same knowledge is common to the both of us but the "feelings" are our own.

As the man "wills" he becomes a morality play as one builds a bridge, another loves his neighbor while another performs a heinous deed. This activity of "will" is initiated by his thought which is ascribed from the world of "ideas" which is brought to the world of man in freedom of the will.

The "ideas" are the expression of the Divine to which is in converse with, men of all types and gender and place, with this realm through "intuitive thinking" . We live within this realm as we think , even when thinking of the most materialistic of ethos.

And so the man who said there is a need for the Divine for our moral comfort,is on the right track. We are there and our work is to clarify our own being within the cosmos of spirit, not to assume we should leave ourselves out of the equation. " Oh, Man, Know Thou thyself ".

My guess is quantum mechanics is a better interpretation of the world than how we perceive the world. Evolution has used what's available, and also biogenesis in the first place. It has kind of cut off a piece of the world to work with and giving us the perceptions, possibly greatly flawed or 'eccentric'. For example 'matter' may be an almost laughable concept.

The nice thing is that it doesn't matter whether the concept of matter is an accurate description of the universe. "Up" isn't a fundamental part of physics, but it is useful. Distinguishing between rocks is useful. The one not hurtling at you isn't as important as the one that is.

It might be important to consider the relative importance of non-existence things (that, of course, aren't things at all) when determining what to eat for breakfast.

Do you also deny that multiple things exist? Or do you only deny that things exist as separate?

If the former, then by extension you also deny the existence of similarity/difference - as between things. If multiple things do not exist (and it's just one thing), then there's no basis for differentiating anything.

This would contradict your earlier claim - "there's really no two things that are the same". If multiple things don't exist there's no basis for differentiating between things; there is only one thing and it's all the same.

If the latter then what is it that you mean by "separate"?

Does this include separation in terms of the underlying qualities or functions of things? Or strictly physically separate or?

And remember: if everything is one, you run into the problem outlined above - differentiation does not exist; it's all the same - this runs into further problems (e.g. how you come to know what 'same' is) but I won't go there yet.

A spectrum has different things that are one.

A broad enough spectrum can have every different thing on it. A spectrum of everything, including nothing. Can you disprove it if you must be on it?

Wait, whoops... beg pardon That’s language, not a spectrum of everything huh? Or is it..

For our personal security, naturally. Just trying to get the big picture.

When you zoom out the universe looks kinda like the neural network of the brain.

What if our entire existence, past, presence and future is just the brain of some 15-year old fat kid eating transdimensional sausage rolls while living in his momma's basement?

Some things are best left unknown.