In 2015, I published my first peer-reviewed paper about metaphysics in the journal Symposion: An evolutionary argument for a self-explanatory, benevolent metaphysics.
The paper proves, among other things, that a deterministic solipsism is true: even though every other possible life exists, your conscious experience exists infinitely many times more often than any other conscious experience, and is therefore observed with certainty. Your life is the ultimate outcome of a maximally infinitely complex computation that takes everything into account. Every logical thing and every physical thing, that is to say. One way to come directly to this conclusion is to claim that indeterminism is not logically coherent. Imagine an indeterministic universe is all there is. In this case we have events that are lacking a cause, events that literally emerge out of nothing. Such events are lacking a logical explanation of why they exist, which is why indeterminism cannot be the case. It only reveals a deficient capability of the empirical sciences to observe their environment satisfactorily.
The paper also proves that the maximal metaphysics is benevolent in two steps:
It is possible that the maximal metaphysics is benevolent
It is the case that the maximal metaphysics is benevolent
Since a maximal metaphysics contains every possible thing, it also contains malevolent hells. However, because of the infinite multiplicity ratios, these hells may exist infinitely many times less often than benevolent heavens. Therefore it is possible that the maximal metaphysics is benevolent. That the maximal metaphysics is also benevolent draws on the fact that malevolent entities will often hide their nature by acting benevolent, while benevolent entities will never act malevolent. This asymmetry lets benevolence win over malevolence in the maximal metaphysics.
A third conclusion the paper makes is that David Lewis causal isolation of all the possible worlds is a flawed idea. If all the possible worlds exist, then for every pair of worlds A and B, there exists a third world C in which intrinsic duplicate worlds A’ and B’ are reproduced infinitely many times in a causal systems that takes all the internal properties of the As and the Bs into account. The probability that we observe the causally isolated world, rather than a causally connected intrinsic duplicate world is therefore infinitely small. The actual world is with certainty the plenitude itself.
Finally, it is concluded that Occam’s razor is ambiguous. Its adoption of the minimum number of ontological entities can mean two things: minimize the number of things that exist, or minimize the number of types of things that exist. Only the second interpretation makes sense, which shows that we do live in the plenitude in which all the possible physical entities exist. Rejecting the actuality of the plenitude comes down to splitting the plenitude in two regions: an actual and a non-actual part. This is not sufficiently ontologically parsimonious.
Download Open Access: An evolutionary argument for a self-explanatory, benevolent metaphysics