Well, Holt found an answer that was satisfying to him, although I remain skeptical. He starts with Derek Parfit's construct: that anything could have happened, but only one thing did, and how was that one thing selected as the winning reality? He then assumes two principles:
1) For every truth, there is an explanation of why it is true.
2) No truth explains itself.
Based on these assumptions, he rules out all but two possible operational principles. One, the principle of Simplicity, doesn't work, because the simplest reality would be the empty set, the one where nothing at all happened, and that is clearly not the reality we are experiencing. The other organizing principle could be Fullness. So, under this principle, the Universe would be both full and empty, both simple and complicated, both good and bad, etcetera-- which is exactly how we experience Reality! It's not uniformly fantastic, but it's not completely awful either. Holt goes on to look at the probabilities of a cosmos that was on an extreme versus one that sits in the middle of the spectrum, and from a logical and mathematical perspective concludes that from the organizing principle of Fullness, this reality was generated.
I think this is a whole lot of unacceptable assumption and still doesn't answer the Ultimate Question. Holt never really explains where the principle of Fullness came from, or what it had to work with to generate Reality. He himself must not be completely satisfied, because he does continue his quest and speak with John Updike, who is a theist and envisions God (unsurprisingly) as an author, who, becoming bored with nothingness, made the world "as a bit of light verse." Holt also details some personal experiences that only underscore the fact that whatever our theories about Life, the Universe, and Everything, we have to function in the material world every day as if it made sense....
So that's what happens in Dewey section 110-119. The big questions will no doubt continue through the 100's...
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