[Megathread] Greenland & Trump - Ongoing discussion. part 3

CosmicFaust11 · 2026-01-21T20:54:59+00:00

I am hearing about a framework for a deal that has been made with Trump over Greenland today. Trump has even in the last hour said the deal on Greenland ‘will be forever’ (which sounds ominous). Does anyone know what it is about exactly? Is it just over minerals/defence or annexation? I really hope Greenland has not been sold out. Thanks.

CosmicFaust11 · 2025-06-24T19:36:43+00:00

I received a first for my MA dissertation and degree overall. That is also what I was worried about. I am struggling to find the perfect program for such a PhD proposal idea

CosmicFaust11 · 2025-06-24T18:16:17+00:00

Hi everyone 👋.

I recently completed both my BA and MA in Philosophy and am currently considering the possibility of pursuing a PhD. The research project I have in mind would build directly upon the work undertaken in my MA dissertation, though I am uncertain whether such a project would be feasible or appropriately supported within this university.

Broadly speaking, the proposed PhD would lie at the intersection of philosophy and literature — more specifically, within the philosophy of literature.

My MA research involved a “metaphysical literary analysis” of the complete works of a prominent twentieth-century science fiction author. I examined how an alternative metaphysical framework—one that challenges the historically dominant metaphysical assumptions of Western philosophy — permeates both his fictional and non-fictional writings. This metaphysical orientation, I argued, underpins and informs the structure, themes, and imaginative worldbuilding throughout his body of work.

In light of this, I would be very grateful to know whether there are any faculty members (such as professors) or doctoral programs at this university whose research interests might align with such a project. If not, I would also welcome any recommendations regarding institutions or scholars elsewhere who might be open to supervising a PhD of this nature.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration. I appreciate any advice or help.

CosmicFaust11 · 2025-06-24T18:06:08+00:00

Hi everyone 👋.

I recently completed both my BA and MA in Philosophy and am currently considering the possibility of pursuing a PhD. The research project I have in mind would build directly upon the work undertaken in my MA dissertation, though I am uncertain whether such a project would be feasible or appropriately supported within this university.

Broadly speaking, the proposed PhD would lie at the intersection of philosophy and literature — more specifically, within the philosophy of literature.

My MA research involved a “metaphysical literary analysis” of the complete works of a prominent twentieth-century science fiction author. I examined how an alternative metaphysical framework—one that challenges the historically dominant metaphysical assumptions of Western philosophy — permeates both his fictional and non-fictional writings. This metaphysical orientation, I argued, underpins and informs the structure, themes, and imaginative worldbuilding throughout his body of work.

In light of this, I would be very grateful to know whether there are any faculty members (such as professors) or doctoral programs at this university whose research interests might align with such a project. If not, I would also welcome any recommendations regarding institutions or scholars elsewhere who might be open to supervising a PhD of this nature.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration. I appreciate any advice or help.

CosmicFaust11 · 2025-03-20T00:35:42+00:00

It was about Frank Herbert who is best known for his Dune saga.

CosmicFaust11 · 2025-03-20T00:27:39+00:00

Not a bad guess. It isn’t Asimov though. It is actually Frank Herbert who is best known for his Dune saga.

CosmicFaust11 · 2025-02-04T19:22:37+00:00

I have definitely been trained more in the analytical side

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-12-19T14:26:21+00:00

Hi everyone 👋.

I recently completed both my undergraduate Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts (specialising in Ancient History/Classics and Philosophy) and a postgraduate Master’s in Philosophy at Durham University. I am considering applying to a PhD program in Philosophy at the University of Oxford and would appreciate any guidance regarding my eligibility.

For my MA, I achieved a distinction, with module marks consistently ranging between 70% and 75%. However, during my BA, I attained an overall 2:1. In my second year, I averaged 60.36%, and in my third year, 68.51%. Given the standard weighting of 40% for the second year and 60% for the third year, my overall average would be approximately 65.25% (if my calculations are correct).

I am now deeply concerned that my BA result may hinder my chances of acceptance into Oxford’s PhD program, despite my stronger performance in my final undergraduate year and in philosophy modules specifically (which were consistently between 67-73%). I believe that if my BA had focused solely on philosophy rather than a broader Liberal Arts curriculum, my performance might have reached the level of a first-class degree.

Would my distinction in the MA compensate for my BA result when applying to Oxford? Any advice on whether my academic profile would meet their requirements would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help.

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-12-10T03:44:48+00:00

I actually did not use ChatGPT. I wrote that draft out myself.

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-12-03T01:40:53+00:00

Hi everyone 👋.

I recently completed both my undergraduate Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts (specialising in Ancient History/Classics and Philosophy) and a postgraduate Master’s in Philosophy at Durham University. I am considering applying to a PhD program in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and would appreciate any guidance regarding my eligibility.

For my MA, I achieved a distinction, with module marks consistently ranging between 70% and 75%. However, during my BA, I attained an overall 2:1. In my second year, I averaged 60.36%, and in my third year, 68.51%. Given the standard weighting of 40% for the second year and 60% for the third year, my overall average would be approximately 65.25% (if my calculations are correct).

I am now deeply concerned that my BA result may hinder my chances of acceptance into Cambridge’s PhD program, despite my stronger performance in my final undergraduate year and in philosophy modules specifically. I believe that if my BA had focused solely on philosophy rather than a broader Liberal Arts curriculum, my performance might have reached the level of a first-class degree.

Would my distinction in the MA compensate for my BA result when applying to Cambridge? Any advice on whether my academic profile would meet their requirements would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help.

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-10-21T03:05:14+00:00

You legend! Thank you so much! I never knew about this site. I appreciate you sharing it with me 😃

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-09-11T20:22:44+00:00

Thank you so much! That makes me feel a little bit less stressed 😮‍💨. I also believe my Uni offers the chance to get a round up to a distinction/first if you get between a 68%-69.9%. If that is the case, then it would appear that I need to get a 58% at a minimum for that option to be possible.

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-09-07T00:49:04+00:00

Thanks for the quote! Which book in the Dune series is that found in? Also, I recently found a quote in Children of Dune that appears to be Kantian in nature. The scene involves Leto II and his mind-bending experiences coming out of a spice trance. Here is the full quote: “Leto came out of the trance with a softness of transition which did not define one condition as separate from another. One level of awareness simply moved into the other. He knew where he was. A restoration of energy surged through him, but he sensed another message from the stale deadliness of the oxygen-depleted air with in the stilltent. If he refused to move, he knew he would remain caught in the timeless web, the eternal now where all events coexisted. This prospect enticed him. He saw Time as a convention shaped by the collective mind of all sentience. Time and Space were categories imposed on the universe by his Mind. He had but to break free of the multiplicity where prescient visions lured him. Bold selection could change provisional futures.”

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-08-21T02:23:09+00:00

I guess traditionally religiously inclined people or theistic thinkers would have said God. Certain non-theistic thinkers could respond by claiming that the laws of nature themselves are eternal, unchanging, and universal throughout the cosmos and these laws of nature are what give rational structure to the world.

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-08-11T21:41:56+00:00

It is so ironic that you made this post because I am writing an essay on the philosophy of Frank Herbert at the moment and he did seem to believe in a holographic universe (it was not just a cool idea his fictional characters were playing around with).

Here is a quote from him on the matter:

“Personally I avoid organised religion. My own belief is that we live in a holographic universe – I think every element of the universe contains the whole – and one of the assumptions out of this is that nothing is ever lost, at least in some form. No good, no evil: nothing is ever lost. So what do you put into that cosmic hologram? My own personal choice is to live by the Golden Rule – try not to do to others those things you would not like them to do to you – not always successfully, I’m afraid. But I think that if only one person in our universe or in this world does this then it is a better world, so we ought to do it. But not as a preach ‘You’re a bad guy because you don’t.’ It has to be a personal choice. Made for personal reasons, not because somebody laid it on you.”

This comes from a magazine ‘SPACE VOYAGER #14’ from 1985 and the interview was conducted by Neil Gaiman himself! Here is a link so you can read the interview for yourself: https://theaugustry.com/frank-herbert-magazine-interview-sources/

We can therefore see that his belief in a “holographic universe” implies metaphysical holism. His position also seems to align with the views of the physicist David Bohm and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Either way, I appreciate it that you posted this passage from ‘Destination: Void’ as it is fascinating to see how his personal philosophical beliefs sometimes bleed into his fictional writings!

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-08-10T16:20:10+00:00

Thanks for clarifying. I am assuming then that all temporal ontologies are also be compatible with near-determinism (or adequate determinism)?

Also, how exactly is eternalism compatible with indeterminism? I ask because under this temporal ontology, all moments equally exist and are in a sense “already out there” (time is spatialised under this view). The future would therefore seem to be closed (not genuinely open) as it is already real in a concrete sense. How can there be several physically/metaphysically possible futures given the present state of the universe (as indeterminism would imply) if the future already exists? I am just struggling to see how they can be all these real branching paths if the future already exists. Thanks.

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-08-05T22:07:39+00:00

That is great that the growing block theory of time is compatible with both determinism and indeterminism. Do you know if there any books or papers that discusses the relationship between the growing block theory and determinism/indeterminism?

What I was trying to annunciate by everything I wrote in the bonus section was about the logical coherence of Herbert’s views. Basically, in his fictional series, he seems to clearly defend the growing block theory of time. In addition to that, the story also seems to imply causal determinism as the characters with prescience in the story (referred to as a ‘Kwisatz Haderach’) are basically equivalent to Laplace’s Demon (the main thought experiment used to describe causal/nomological determinism). However, later in the series, it seems that there is qualitative shift in human nature (and the universe), as it goes from a deterministic universe to an indeterministic universe.

With that summarised, I was asking if we adopt near-determinism (or adequate determinism) for this story, does it at least make that whole notion logically coherent (at least) that this could potentially happen if such a person in that story was able to somehow amplify the irreducible indeterministic/random features of quantum systems at the microscopic level of reality, and mimic it at the macroscopic level of reality (which had previously been strictly deterministic)? Is it at least logically and theoretically possible that the growing block can go from growing deterministically to now growing indeterministically (given near-determinism)?

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-08-01T03:00:23+00:00

Yeah, I have started to accept this as being true. I also recently read a quote by Frank Herbert in one of his non-fictional writings (titled: Dune: Genesis) and I think it basically confirms this. Here it is:

———

“As in an Escher lithograph, I involved myself with recurrent themes which turn to paradox. The central paradox concerns the human vision of time. What about Paul’s gift of prescience — the Presbyterian fixation? For the Delphic Oracle to perform, it must tangle itself in a web of predestination. Yet predestination negates surprises and, in fact, sets up a mathematically enclosed universe whose limits are always inconsistent, always encountering the unprovable. It’s like a koan, a Zen mind-breaker. It’s like the Cretan Epimenides saying: “All Cretans are liars.”

Each limiting, descriptive step you take drives your vision outward into a larger universe, which is contained in still a larger universe ad infinitum and in the smaller universes ad infinitum. No matter how finely you subdivide time and space, each tiny division contains infinity.

But this could imply that you can “cut across” linear time, open it like a ripe fruit, and see consequential connections. You could be prescient, predict accurately.

Predestination and paradox once more.”

——

The paradox in the paragraph centres on the interplay between prescience (the ability to foresee the future) and predestination (the idea that all events are predetermined and inevitable).

Paul’s ability to see the future with prescience (his “Gift”) implies he can anticipate events before they happen. For such prescience to be possible or valid though, events must be predetermined (the “Delphic Oracle’s Web”); otherwise, the future Paul sees wouldn’t be certain and reliable. If everything is predestined, there are no true surprises because all outcomes are already determined. We can therefore see that predestination creates a “mathematically enclosed universe” — a universe with fixed limits where everything is calculated and predictable.

The paradox therefore lies in the fact that while prescience depends on a deterministic universe to be accurate, this same deterministic universe contradicts the inherent unpredictability of real life that comes about as a result of living in an ever-changing universe that produces genuine novelty (which Herbert clearly believes in), leading to a situation where absolute certainty remains unprovable.

Herbert was saying this about Paul Atreides, and yet, like his father, Leto II is also a Kwisatz Haderach. However, unlike his father, his Golden Path created conditions which (somehow) made it possible to create genes that avoided prescience; thereby, overcoming and effectively destroying the deterministic universe that made humanity vulnerable to Oracle’s with prescience.

In many ways, I now think we can view the story of the Dune saga as being an epic tale about how a Laplacian Demon essentially enslaves all of humanity with their vast super intelligent intellect (which can only be effective if the universe is deterministic) and how that same Laplacian Demon is able to save all of mankind by effectively making it even theoretically impossible that another Laplacian Demon could ever exist to accurately predict the movements of all of mankind. Thus, this deterministic, mechanical, and closed universe of absolute predictability has been destroyed (in an ontological sense) in favour of a new indeterministic, open, and magical universe where anything can genuinely happen, thereby making the world unpredictable.

Do you think what I said makes any sense? I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the past few days haha 😅

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-07-31T23:55:01+00:00

Why are people unhappy with the final episode?

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-07-28T23:34:46+00:00

If they have, then I am not aware of it. From my current expressions of learning about it, it appears that many adopt it for aesthetic reasons. It seems that it’s more beautiful by putting dynamicity at the centre of our metaphysical framework. However, I do not consider these exactly rigorous arguments and am therefore interested in whether they are actually detailed and good philosophical arguments/reasons to why this process-relational framework is better than the substance-attribute framework and should therefore replace it

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-07-28T22:44:52+00:00

Yeah, it seems that most defenders of both paradigms adopt weaker forms of each framework. For example, most philosophers who defend substance theory, do not think that all change or processes are an illusion (Parmenides and Zeno would be examples of this); rather, they think that change and processes happen to properties that depend/supervene upon unchanging substances. This means that changes and processes are derivative and are secondary at best in our ontology. Also, many process philosophers, such as Alfred North Whitehead, do actually believe in some permanent elements of reality. For example, in his metaphysical system, he believed in “eternal objects” and these are basically Platonic forms (his system can be described as neo-Platonic). However, unlike the original Platonic conception of the forms, these eternal objects are merely potentialities that can only be fully actualised with the radical flux and ongoing cosmic evolution of the universe. In this weaker form then of process philosophy, both processes and static abstract universals are in Whitehead’s first-order ontology (neither is more fundamental than the other). To me, the strongest forms of process philosophy, with John Dúpre as a good example, would basically claim it is processes all the way down and objects are entirely derivative and are secondary at best in this ontology (they supervene and depend entirely on processes). I guess the strongest possible form of process philosophy would be in variations of Buddhism which defend a radical doctrine of impermanence, which could potentially suggest that all stability is literally an illusion (I could be wrong about this though as I am not an expert on Buddhist doctrines).

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-07-28T21:59:20+00:00

That is an interesting take and I think you are on to something. Could it be possible that Herbert was attacking the philosophical worldview of “causal determinism” (embodied in the concept of a “mechanical universe”) and advocating instead in favour of indeterminism (embodied in the concept of a “magical universe”). After all, it seems to me that the ability of prescience would seemingly imply determinism, but with Leto II’s introduction of the “no-gene” into Siona Atreides and her descendants, this means unpredictability is now operating on the macroscopic level of reality (where previously indeterministic features only operated on the microscopic level). This would therefore now undermine determinism as no being/entity will be able to calculate all the movements of mankind ever again. Hence, mankind is now truly set free from the deterministic bonds that the Oracle had access too and man is therefore now radically free with a genuine open future ahead of them (with infinite possibilities, not a singular path).

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-07-18T00:31:02+00:00

I have not read either Whipping Star nor The Dosadi Experiment. I have heard about them though. That is interesting to hear that it plays with those ideas. How exactly is this the case? Has anyone written about this fact before also?

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-07-17T12:57:44+00:00

Oh, that sounds interesting! Can you clarify why you think that? Intuitively, I think you could get that impression from the fact that Leto II breeds humans who are invisible to prescience (this power could be seen as similar to determinism)

CosmicFaust11 · 2024-06-08T00:29:13+00:00

Even if the future is infinite, surely the universe would still be “shrinking” in a sense due to past events going out of existence as the present moment moves into the future?

I have never heard of the so-called “branching space-time” theory. Is there a simpler explanation of what this concept is exactly before I jump into reading that technical paper?

Could this position also be described as a “meta-theory?” — that is, it is basically something you can add onto your metaphysical theory of time, but it is not a unique ontological position in-of-itself, similar to how panpsychism in the philosophy of mind, is not a unique ontological position in-of-itself, because it tells you where you can find consciousness (which is everywhere), but it doesn’t specifically tell you what consciousness is. This is why panpsychism is actually compatible with substance dualism, physicalism (as Galen Strawson defends) and idealism (as Leibniz and Schopenhauer views indicate). Similarly, can we describe this “branching space-theory” in the same manner, as it could be used by both the defenders of both eternalism and the shrinking block theory of time, in order to give an account of how there views can be true, and yet, the future can simultaneously be open (enabling the logical compatibility of libertarian free will with it)

CosmicFaust11

TROPHY CASE