[staticassertion]

I mean, these are all just metaphysical claims. It also doesn't seem to address brute facts, which would be within reality, so it seems sort of pointless. It also doesn't seem to address infinite regresses.

Even if I grant your "axiom", which is just that "reality exclusively contains reality", nothing interesting follows from that for this conversation.

[Nevermark]

If there is only one such structure, if it is unique, then the question of its existence goes away. What would existence mean?

We would just know there was a unique self-consistent all consistent form covering structure. And that any form within that structure, with a sophisticating self-sensing self-interpretive ability, would experience its own existence.

Existence would then mean, part of the unique self-consistent, zero-information, independent of any externality, structure.

A perceived existence as a result of a unique tautological structure, not a result of any external composition.

And the phrase "I think therefore I am", would be tautological in both senses. As evidence. But also, as the actual meaning of existence. Given a self-aware form within a tautology, its perception of existence is the nature of existence.

Reality was always going to be something that forms structures, that are somehow inevitable, the only possibility, not something selected or manufactured by something else.

[staticassertion]

I mean, again, these are just claims and, once again, another brute fact.

> Reality was always going to be something that includes structure, that is somehow inevitable, the only possibility, not something selected or manufactured by something else.

This is a brute fact. I mean, literally it just is.

[Nevermark]

It isn't a brute fact, because there is no alternative.

That is the definition of fully determined. X can uniquely be Y. And it can't be anything else than Y.

The extreme opposition to a brute fact.

Can we accept that any proposed model of reality potentially must, at a minimum, be self-determining without resort to any "other"?

The unique constraint of strict self-containment and determination is a tautological challenge, but therefore also a valid axiom.

[staticassertion]

No, that means it's not a brute contingent fact. It is still a brute fact. And it is a metaphysical claim that there is no alternative.

> And that it can't be the full reality if it is not self-determining, draws from anything else, any other domain, depends on any non-internal choice, any wisp of external determination?

No, brute contingent facts do not require external determination, so I reject this obviously. Or, I accept it and it's irrelevant because, again, brute contingent facts do not require external determination.

[Nevermark]

They are not determined internally.

So determined non-internally if you prefer. Non-internal to reality.

My point is that is a tautological impossibility. Reality by definition is all. That is what we want to explain (or at least, zoom in on a potential form of explanation).

Reality can't depend on anything making a choice that is not a part of itself.

[staticassertion]

I think you just aren't understanding what it means to be "brute". It does not mean "caused externally", it means "the end of the explanatory chain has been reached". If you want to say that the explanatory chain has no end, great, go for it, you now have a regress problem.

There is no "choice", there is determination, there is no explanation. If you're still framing things there, then you're just denying brute facts, but you're not about to prove that brute facts aren't possible in a HN thread and you're getting the concepts of necessity, brute, and contingent mixed up along the way.