The longing of the spirit can never be stilled. – Hildegard von Bingen
A reality comprised of conscious agents more likely evolved them than not. In fact, a reality with agency, insofar as appears known, only evolves agency rather than the reverse. Charles Darwin provided the baseline principles in Evolution via Natural Selection.
When a reality exists and evolves consciousness, two premises exist as assumptions. One comes from the fact of existence. Reality exists in a sufficient manner as to garner a concretized form of realness.
At a minimum, to the conscious agents in it, the reality feels concrete, material, physical, actual, tangible, or somatic, so existentially real. Another emerges from the term “evolves.” Behind it, one needs time. A sequential progression of linked moments creating existence’s directionality.
In standard terminology, this gets called the Arrow of Time. Time moves forwards, not backwards. If living in a reverse universe, the real backwards would seem as if forwards. In either case, time exhibits directionality, hence an “Arrow.” It points one way, not both.
With modern science, empiricism, and mathematical derivations, we come to the tentative and evidenced conclusions of a world with moments as non-absolute, as statistical, as a series of moments only at the macro scale.
A macro scale world with the Arrow of Time. A large-scale existence with directionality in time while, at bottom, a series of statistically or probabilistically connected moments with implied pasts in each moment and potential futures.
The instantiation of each moment implies a history and constrains an open future. With “implied pasts in each moment and potential futures,” this means ‘once upon a times’ lead to the ‘here-and-now’ while eventuating only a select grouping of ‘there-and-thens.’
The fact of existence and the truth of time become points of reference in consideration of a reality with conscious agents. Those operators in existence with agency, consciousness. Conscious aspects of consciousness as the mentation of the operations, the system.
Consciousness, as rich, diverse, and deeply interconnected networks of natural information processing devoted to an agentic arena of processing and selection, seems to emerge, evolve, later in reality rather than in some incomprehensibly early stage of the lifecycle of reality.
Non-conscious consciousness as the filter of the natural information derived from interpreted reality through the ‘senses’ or the external nodes — e.g., tactile, olfactory, auditory, gustatory, or visual, informational structures.
Those delivered — e.g., afferent-efferent nerve pathways — to conscious consciousness for selection, choice. It appears through evolutionary selective processes rather than creative teleological operations, whether instantaneous or progressive.
Some environmental, psychological, sexual, and social, selective pressures formulate the ‘need’ for some centralization of information processing. A conscious arena to manipulate the information gathered from the environment and generated internal to the system.
Entities, agents, thinking and moving in a reality define ethics; the principles governing the thought and behaviour define the morality. In that, the fact of being in reality of an agent comprises the ethics.
In this sense, ethics becomes non-absolute too. As the complete nature and existence of the agent defines its morality, agency internal to the system becomes the generativity of the ethical constructs themselves.
Thus, with existence and time, agency and morality, the qualitative difference becomes the next consideration of the speculation. Agents with an ethic tilted more towards directives of annihilation will cease to exist, eventually and even instantaneously.
Entities with a morality tilted more towards directives of creation will continue to exist. Both based on principles of reasoning grounded in statistical or probabilistic considerations of the matters of existence, time, agency, morality, and annihilation/creation.
Once the principles of reasoning construct the Statistical Argument for Existence, the Statistical Argument for Temporality, the Statistical Argument for Agency, and the Statistical Argument for Morality, these can become the bases for the principles of existence as a generalized truism set.
A philosophy of truism as a basis for principles not laws, loose rules not divine decrees. Those which can’t not be; those distinct significations of existence as principles demarcating unique markers of reality sufficient to become a novel variant. Everything coupled together.
The apparent metaphysical matters of ethics do not come with this presentation. The ideas of morality or ethics acquire this stain due to the theological and religious, i.e., transcendentalist, poundings of the previous centuries.
Only the last couple to recent few centuries began to wash the cloth and refresh the minds, as if cool water on the face on a hot, arid day. No need for the necessary metaphysical, except in other considerations properly deemed non-theological, perhaps theosophical — as in an utter rejection of theology.
Annihilation and creation may appear tighter definitions of the more generalized terms disorder and order, respectively. The principles of the morality of “annihilation” as “disorder” and the ethics of “creation” as “order.”
Thus, “Agents with an ethic tilted more towards directives of annihilation will cease to exist, eventually and even instantaneously” translates as “agents with an ethic tilted more towards directives of disorder will cease to exist, eventually and even instantaneously.”
“Entities with a morality tilted more towards directives of creation will continue to exist” translates as “entities with a morality tilted more towards directives of order will continue to exist.”
The “agents” or “entities” as conscious operators whose being or complete manifestation in reality dispose to the disorder generating & maintaining or order generating and maintaining, whose total nature inclines more to annihilation or creation, respectively.
As with the statistical inevitability of existence, time, agency, and morality, the unavoidability of existence and time in existence attests to the order generation and maintenance of realities, probabilistically. They exist more than not; they last more than end.
The actuality of an order generation and maintenance in the domain of discourse relevant to facts grounded in existence and temporality for agency, as in the two base premises prior to the is/ought distinction, or the line drawn out, before.
Beings exist. By existing, beings equate to facts. Factual propositions exist about them. Substantive statements exist for them. Those premises about pieces of reality with evidenced content.
Beings with conscious consciousness, conscious entities, operators, or entities with property “agency.” If only one, this operator constructs value for their self and their environment. If more than one, these operators create value for their selves, their relations, and their environment.
A valuation of no value becomes a value, too. To some, their self, other selves, or the environment, don’t matter to them. To a sole inhabitant of a reality, to value itself at zero, it may self-murder/self-annihilate, this becomes an ethic, too. Ethics becomes inevitable.
Nihilism, as in no ethics whatsoever, becomes a failed stance in realities with agency. In that, with valuation, this influences actions in the world; hence, this amounts to the ethic, unavoidably. In degrees of affirmation/negation, it’s there. Thus, agency generates ethics.
The facts of reality must inform the values in reality with the facts as first matter and values as second matter, or facts as primary and values as secondary, not vice versa. Meaningful values discourse begins with factual morality, not moral facts.
The truth of order for existence, time, and (non-conscious and) conscious agents in the universe informs ethics, as agency generates ethics and facts inform morality. These agents follow the incline of the statistical tendencies of form and content of reality, or do not.
The “incline of the statistical tendencies of form and content of reality” meaning “the unavoidability of existence and time in existence attests to the order generation and maintenance of realities,” or a set of them.
An implied truth in order generation and maintenance as a baseline for existence and time, and for the fact of order generation and maintenance required for evolved agency. In turn, the values of agency, whether order disposed or disorder inclined, will require the same.
As the values come from agency, and as order generation and maintenance provide the baseline for existence and time, the values constructed by the agency’s being will exhibit the same forms of persistence as a statistical tendency and inevitability seen in existence, with time, and in agency.
The facts of reality evince persistence for existence, for temporality, for agency, for morality. The facts of order generation and maintenance for each as a probabilistic outcome of the sets of the possible and the favoured amongst the potential.
The values of operators in reality will tend to value order generation and maintenance for themselves, others, and the environment more than value disorder generation and maintenance for themselves, others, and the environment.
Therefore, the statistical tendency or statistical inevitability of morality/ethics, derived as a consequence of agency with a base of existence and time will internalize in mentation and externalize in action, towards valuation of order over disorder.
The value of order generation and maintenance by agency in reality as a reflective statistical consequent of the fact of realities manifesting as order generation and maintenance by the truth of existence, itself, existing.
Any agency valuing more disorder than order will cease to exist in time, eventually. In this, is/ought, as facts/values, exhibit a separation and a coupling with the persistence of reality and agency as then reflected in the tendency in values of agency towards order over disorder.
If islands of agency determine disorder more valuable than order, then the agency — itself, immediate others, and its environment — will cease existing in due time. Sufficient disorder ends agency. Thus, the ethics/morality of agency will become order disposed.
As stated in “Statistical Inevitability as a Cross-Sect of the Axiomatic, the Temporal, the Existential, and the Axiological”:
We come to the stream of statistical inevitabilities with statistical arguments for existence, temporality, agency, and morality.
If the set of possible universes remains larger than the set of null universes, then existence becomes statistically more probable. If existence becomes statistically more probable, then realities with more than one moment of time become statistically more probable than realities with only one moment of time.
If realities with more than one moment become statistically more probable than realities with only one moment of time, then one set will evolve conscious information processors and one set will not.
If conscious information processors evolve in one set of universes, and if morality/ethics define as “principles governing behaviour or conducting of an activity,” then evolving conscious information processors creates morality/ethics, because conscious information processors cerebrate/move or conduct activities.
If evolving conscious information processors creates morality/ethics, then ethics/morality becomes statistically inevitable in one set of universes. Thus, if the set of possible universes remains larger than the set of null universes, then ethics/morality becomes statistically inevitable in one set of universes.
The statistically probable occurrence of existence, of time, of agency, of ethics. If negated at any stage, the argument fails. If no existence, then no time, no agency, and no ethics; if existence and no time, then no agency and no ethics; if existence, time, and no agency, then no ethics; if existence, time, and agency, then ethics.
Ethics comes from agency. Agency comes from time. Time comes from existence. Existence separates from non-existence more likely than not. Is/ought remains preserved as separate ideas, but become coupled together.
Furthermore, if “ethics/morality becomes statistically inevitable in one set of universes,” then the persistence of existence, of time, of agency, will derivate a persistence in ethics/morality in reality, as ethics/morality comes from agency.
If the persistence of existence, of time, of agency, will derivate a persistence in ethics/morality in reality, then existence, time, agency, and ethics/morality exhibit order generation and maintenance.
If existence, time, agency, and ethics/morality exhibit order generation and maintenance, then the truth of reality, in existence, time, and agency, exhibits order generation and maintenance, as facts of the matter.
If the truth of reality, in existence, time, and agency, exhibits order generation and maintenance, then the values in reality reflect the truth of reality, in existence, time, and agency, exhibiting order generation and maintenance.
If values in reality reflect the truth of reality, in existence, time, and agency, exhibiting order generation and maintenance, then agency as manifest through operators in existence dispose more towards order than disorder.
If agency as manifest through operators in existence dispose more towards order than disorder, then the statistical tendency or unavoidability of ethics/morality of operators in existence disposed towards order generation and maintenance.
If the statistical tendency or unavoidability of ethics/morality of operators in existence dispose towards order generation and maintenance, then the probabilistic default of ethics/morality in existence as order generation and maintenance rather than disorder generation and maintenance.
Therefore, “if the set of possible universes remains larger than the set of null universes,” then the probabilistic default of ethics/morality in existence as order generation and maintenance rather than disorder generation and maintenance.
The inevitable, unavoidable, fact of existence, of time, of agency, of morality, of order, the real not only statistically exists and probabilistically becomes favoured to exist; its persistence becomes favoured as a property in the truth of reality and the values about reality.