Originally Posted by AstroReader

My apologies if my comments appeared to depict you as either mainstream or not; I had hoped simply to characterize the ideas, not the man. Perhaps I failed to make that clear.

Originally Posted by AstroReader

However, regardless of the foregoing, my idea of what is mainstream, what is preposterous, and what, in the middle, is permissible speculation is well evidenced by a similar approach taken by Dr. Michio Kaku. I will link a particularly pertinent article of his as follows:

http://www.mkaku.org/articles/hyper_sci_odyssey.shtml

Originally Posted by AstroReader

What is evidence? What is logical empiricism's role in the discussion of anti-mainstream thinking?

Originally Posted by AstroReader

The issue of epistemology was raised hereinabove, and I acknowledge that science cannot produce knowledge, qua knowledge, without the rigor associated with a firm foundation and some reasonable degree of certitude regarding the ontology of a particular claim. No one takes science fiction seriously as science fact, and similarly no one should confuse my speculation with any pretense at knowledge. It is, at best, a reasonable chain of logical links that do not depart too radically from received knowledge. Hence, from my point of view, it is (conveniently, I may add) the case that I do not have to meet an empirical understanding, nor even a mathematical one, of my postulates in order to state them.

In fact, it is my hope that those who are familiar with logical empiricism who desire to comment on this speculation can do both of the follow: (1) Disprove the postulates I have set forth (1.) by (a.) empirical means or (b.) mathematical logic (2.) in a manner that makes intuitive sense. The laws of conservation that you cite are obviously the considered result of empirical and logical analysis of the most reliable sort, and have withstood all manner of observation. I do not question them as they are (although, for reasons presented in the next paragraph, I do not agree that they must prevail in every speculation that does not claim to be truth).

Originally Posted by AstroReader

A response to the above may be that it is not up anyone but me to advance any proof, since my claims are extraordinary, and as I have presented none. But my statements in this thread, as to the speculative theory, extraordinary as they are, do not include that the theory is true. The speculation is, at best, a hypothesis that may be subject to some form of productive discussion.

Originally Posted by AstroReader

If I am wrong in using concepts such as higher dimensional planes or assumptions that logical, mathematical, or even intuitive links of thought have some validity in hypotheses, then, of course, your position on this matter would rule the day. It is because I do not claim that my theory is knowledge, but merely informed speculation, that I believe that it does not.

On another note, I would say that the term "universe" is a semantic thorn in the side, and I would simply avoid the problem of monism (the reasonable idea that "universe" means "everything") by using the often-advanced notion that the "universe" is everything that can be observed, rather than everything that is possible.

Originally Posted by AstroReader

Regarding the issue of the creation of possible universes advanced in another reply in this thread, it seems to me an answer that in a "meta" sense, every universe in every possible instantiation already exists, and that we are simply witnessing the course of our own universe through each of them.