Genius: Nothing is forever. The universe will suffer heat death due to entropy.

Plato: An anti-eternity does not solve the problem of universals.

Genius: It’s not a “problem.” It’s an “idea.”

Plato: If the properties of an idea are applied universally, they hold independent of agency.

Genius: So?

Plato: Ideas are eternal.

Genius: Only in our minds.

Plato: Not necessarily. Name its root cause.

Genius: The mind is the tree of axon-dendrite connections over action potentials (like potential difference in a circuit) spawning electrochemical induced imagery. It is not the imagery itself but the seat of the imagery, from memory formation till death.

Plato: But you’ve explained nothing except to say that the mind is the seat of imagery.

Genius: Which is not eternal.

Plato: The mind, or ideas?

Genius: Both. Neither.

Plato: You like the Vedic thought process, but not its conclusions.

 

+++

Plato: Ok, let’s track back. How does your “seat of imagery” make decisions? Love, hate, desire, prohibit, inhibit?

Genius: Those things make us human, but animals have them too. We are just more complex animals.

Plato: But how do you explain volition?

Genius: Predicate logic. On/off, yes/no. All decisions can be reduced to that.

Plato: If you only but knew.

Genius: Ooh, mysterious.

 

+++

 

Genius: Look, we are born then we die, these are the highlights anyway. What comes inbetween is “meaningful” in some loose, let’s-make-the-best-of-it kinda way.

Plato: For a moment there I thought you were going to quote sentimental pop art. In summation then, you’re saying you’re a current of electricity kept alive by a circuit board.

Genius: Not really, you’re over simplifying.

Plato: No, you are.

Genius: Existence is meaningless, we give it meaning by conforming to reality.

Plato: But what is this reality you speak of?

Genius: The world as it truly is, behind the false perceptions and lies of idiots. The thing-in-itself, das Ding an Sich.

Plato: The thing-in-itself, this reality, is timeless.

Genius: We only know it through time.

Plato: If it exists outside or independent of time, and we only know it through time, that does not change its true nature.

Genius: Words. If there is no time, life doesn’t make sense.

Plato: Who wants to get rid of time?

 

+++

 

Plato: Look at it this way, time records events.

Genius: Yes, but without events, we’re cows in the field, chewing cud.

Plato: Events give context to cause and effect, including mundane behavior like you describe.

Genius: Okay.

Plato: The first cause makes life possible.

Genius: Now you’re in infinite regress.

Plato: And?

Genius: It’s illogical. The universe is logical, at the very least.

Plato: Both can be false and it would still work.

Genius: How?

Plato: Infinity is where mathematics stops trying, hence the “limit as x approaches lamda.” An illogical universe only means that the logic of the subject cannot understand that of the object.

Genius: An illogical object implies an illogical subject.

Plato: It is your doubt that will ruin you.

Genius: Skeptics will find the truth!

Plato: But will they know what to do with it?

 

+++ Dawn +++

 

Genius: The universe created itself out of awareness of its own absence.

Plato: Interesting, though incoherent.

Genius: It follows that it will destroy itself with an analogous method.

Plato: It does not follow.