The Biggest Question of All

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The Biggest Question of All

Post by peter »

Got to be, "Why something as opposed to nothing?"

I was musing the other day on life, death and stuff and it occurred to me that the thing that seems to get overlooked by the atheist/materialist proponents in their arguments on rationality and stuff is the undeniable fact that there is something. Even Descartes seemed to be unable to get over this one, and I'm doubting that many in the Dawkins school of thought would deny this observation.

Once having accepted that (even if our understanding of what it is is misguided) there is something as opposed to nothing, then it falls to the materialists/atheists/physicists to explain how that is. Believers in a Creative Power or force have their answer ready made (even if it doesn't stand up to scrutiny) but for the deniers of this, the onus falls upon them to come up with an alternative solution. In the absence of this (and I believe we still are in the absence of this) the fact remains - there is something. This we know. Now just to get it clear - nothing requires no explanation....... something does. That there is something, therefore requires those who would eschew any 'non scientific' explanation to come up with a scientific one that fits within the framework of the scientific method as we understand it.

Now, presumably, any attempt to do so will need to be couched in the language of the scientific method - ie math. Presumably there will be a mathematical expression that will be representative of the condition of nothing, and another that will be representative of the condition of something - and the task will be for the theorists to demonstrate that the former will of it's own volition, and without outside influence of any kind, transmute into the latter. How this could ever be is beyond me, but nevertheless this will be the task with which they will be faced. It will not be any use to simply say that "well, there is nothing to say that the something might not just be infinite, therefore it needs no explanation" - because the question of why there is something as opposed to nothing is then failed to be answered.

Taking this route, we are left with the conclusion that the something (which we know to be) is an impossible actuality; that something that simply should not be (ie that there is something instead of nothing) in fact is...... and under these circumstances, once having accepted the occurrence of this impossibility, then anything and everything else (it follows) also becomes possible.

So where, at the current time, does our science stand on this. Have the theorists come up with the math to demonstrate that there has to be something as opposed to nothing. That nothing is the impossible condition and not something? That the infinite something must be, as opposed to the infinite nothing or the nothing that inexorably mutates (without outside influence) into something? I'm not aware that they have, and until they do so cannot but find my own preference - that all is possible in the best of impossible worlds to be the ....well..... preferable one.
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I think your error here is assuming that there has to be a reason. :D "Why something" is easily answered with "why not?" ;)

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Post by wayfriend »

If there was nothing, you would not be asking about it.

This is a basic "pre-condition" problem in statistics (among other things). The question isn't "what are the odds of something existing", it's "what are the odds of something existing GIVEN THAT SOMETHING EXISTS".

I will also add my usual statement: the human mind is incapable of truly grasping nothingness and/or non-existence. It was built for increasing the odds of survival - self-existence.
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Re: The Biggest Question of All

Post by High Lord Tolkien »

peter wrote:
I was musing the other day on life, death and stuff and it occurred to me that the thing that seems to get overlooked by the atheist/materialist proponents in their arguments on rationality and stuff is the undeniable fact that there is something.
Is there?
"undeniable fact"? :lol:


Maybe I don't understand what you're trying to say.
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Post by Fist and Faith »

My position remains that either a) something always existed, or b) something came into being uncaused. I haven't thought of a third possibility. Both seem impossible, yet, since things exist, at least one is the case.
wayfriend wrote:I will also add my usual statement: the human mind is incapable of truly grasping nothingness and/or non-existence.
I like to try to observe the blind spot that we all have. Of course, it's not near the center of your field of vision, so not as easy to try to examine it as something that is. But you can see things that are farther out in your periphery than the blind spot, and examine them as best you can. But there's nothing to examine, and, indeed, I can't grasp it.
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Post by peter »

I hope we can take it that something exists.

Then;

Either that something has existed ad infinitum

or

That something has come into existence from a prior something (the same as existing ad infinitum effectively)

or

It has come into existence from nothing.

But it seems to me that there are a few things to nail down here. Firstly for something to qualify as existing (in the sense that we understand it) it must have both extension and duration. This (surely) is what a universe is; space-time does not exist I think, within a universe - it is a universe. No universe that has no extension in both time and space can qualify as existing can it? This then, seems to be a requirement of qualifying as 'something'.

Absolutely agreeing with Wayfriend above about our total inability to mentally grasp the concept of nothing (notwithstanding) - I wonder if my/the problem here isn't one of 'frames of reference'. Is the distinction between something and nothing a false one; what if they are one and the same? Might it not be, that our theoretical physicist's expression that represents the condition of nothing might be the same one as is representative of the condition of something. Is it simply that the framework upon which our experience of being hangs (up, down and side to side with a clock continuously ticking) makes us see the conditions of something and nothing as two sides of the same coin? I have no idea what other way it could be (that would allow for something and nothing to be one and the same thing, and thereby do away with the 'big question' altogether) - but then I wouldn't, would I? I never could from where I sit.

None of this is of course in any way an argument for the 'existence' (or put better perhaps, the input) of a creative force....... but I contend that until our scientists can nail down the problem of the big question (and who knows - perhaps in some cluttered theorists paper strewn office they already have) then that most wonderful thing of all still remains as solace to those of us who have more being behind us than ahead - that damn!...... anything is possible!


(Edit; to clarify, those last three words have no reference to a creative force which, if it does or has ever existed has (as far as I can see) done it's job. It refers more to the endless possibilities (that knowledge of my having had being against the almost impossible odds that I ever would have) that our having been here allows for. What once has being will not easily be snuffed back into nothingness. Of course I don't refer to my miserable petty (and most probably illusory) impression of self - that worthless entity can dissapear in a puff of smoke for all I care. No I refer to what 'might be' - the 'awfully big adventure' of the Peter Pan school of thought - the one that can be conjured up when you allow your imagination to grow wings and take flight. ;) )
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Post by peter »

Seems to me that the only way we can establish the correctness or otherwise of our understanding of reality - of what it means to 'be' - is via the scientific method, and that this is thin gruel at best as a means of establishing what truly is. In fact, at best, all we can ever use by this method is the predictive power of a theory, the better the predictive power, the closer the approximation of the theory to what is actually in reality happening, and the example of Ptolemy's (was it) cycles and epicycles blows this (as a means of establishing truth) out of the water at a single shot. If predictive power fails as a means of establishing truth in the latter why should general relativity/quantum mechanics fare any better? As Hashi's tag would say - predictive power as with bologna; no matter how thinly you slice it, it's still bologna.

Our understanding of what it is to be is entirely couched within our immersion within the up, down, side to side (with a bit of clock ticking thrown in). Can anything be that doesn't sit within this framework, albeit in another universe entirely separate from ours? Does that putative individual in that other universe, if such are indeed extant, partake of being or not?

And what of the 'other dimensions' rolled up within our own (eight of them?) as postulated by string theory? What is their relationship with the concept of being? Are they something or nothing?

And do these questions simply reflect my complete failure to grasp anything about science and reality, or do they (as I hope) shine a spotlight on the limitations of the scientific method when it attempts to cross into the area of philosophy, to get to grips with the big questions of why there is something as opposed to nothing, of what it actually is to be?
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Post by peter »

Hmm...

I've been doing a bit of research and it seems that science is as far from answering the biggest question as it ever was.

In fact it is not even agreed that it is a valid question at all: some believe there to be a fundamental flaw within it, yet others maintain that it is out of the scientific remit which they say covers only how questions and not why. This seems a bit of a cop out on both occasions to be honest, yet something interesting did emerge from my quick scout about.

The closest thing that the theorists have come up with in answering the question (and the approach that the celebrated Stephen Hawking took) was that it was the inherent instability of the nothingness/quantum flux that causes irregularities to pop in and out of existence, one of such that got caught (as it were) n the existence side of the equation and resulted in the universe we see today. This of course falls flat because the quantum flux cannot in any sense be considered as nothing. Nothing is, well, nothing; there cannot be irregularities or instabilities within it to flip this way or that. The possibility or capacity for change of any form requires that 'something' be there in which the change may occur.

Which brings me on to my second interesting argument. One chap - a scientist (or argumenting within a scientific discussion on The Conversation (I think it was called) forum, said that the proof that something had existed for ever was present in the fact that something existed now. Since it was inconceivable and by definition impossible that pure unadulterated nothing could change in any way (there would be simply nothing to change) it was thus impossible that something could be born of it. Ergo something had to have existed ad infinitum. This makes sense to me, I have to say, difficult though it is to accept. I can see no flaw in the reasoning - with the exception of the following that was raised in argument against it. The argument stumbles upon the issue of time; the state of something seems to need to have time built into it, where it cannot be part of the state of pure nothingness that we are including in our argument. If something has been the case as infinitum (as the argument would seem to 'prove'), then time is an inherent part - in fact is the as infinitum we are talking about. So what happens at the points of the moment of appearance of something; such an argument necessitates that such moments never occur or instantaneously there is a nothing in which the ad infinitum is gone. There can not even for the briefest of instants be a situation where the something and nothing coexist.....or can there?

Flipped if I know!

;)
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Post by peter »

For those who are interested, YouTube has an hour and a half lecture by Harvard University's Lawrence Krauss on this very subject entitled Lawrence Krauss:A universe from nothing. I have not had time to watch it yet, but I believe Krauss is of the 'quantum vacuum' school of thought that I (sort of) refer to above. Maybe this is the closest thing that being can actually get to nothing and true nothing is just an idealised concept that could never 'exist' ( :? ). This would put us into the 'something has been the case in all circumstances {carefully avoiding the word'forever' there'}), which seems to be to be gaining ground by the day. How this alters our understanding of the singularity which some cosmological students ascribe to I have not the slightest idea, but assuredly it must (since it can come no closer to nothing than the quantum vacuum).
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Post by Mighara Sovmadhi »

I hope we can take it that something exists.
Actually, I would challenge that very premise. Not as if to say that, "Nothing exists," is true instead, but rather to call into question the entire question of things existing or not. First, the concept of existence is perhaps not very clear in the first place. Is it a property of an object, or a representation of the extension of concepts? Is there a difference between actuality and existence? What about nonexistent objects that nevertheless "are there" in some sense? What would the ontological status of an impossible world be? And so on and on.

Nevertheless, "Does x exist?" might have some intuitive enough meaning to go through on some level. But on what level, then? "Does existence exist?" Is that a well-formed question? Maybe we might say with the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus that the world is the sum of the facts. We might ask whether facts exist. We might ask, "What is a fact supposed to be?" We might then ask whether a proposition being true is the same as a fact existing, and whether these coincide with obtaining states of affairs. To sum all that up, we might then rephrase, "Does existence exist?" as, "Is it a fact that facts exist?"

Now as for why...? Well, if nothing existed at all, wouldn't why-questions not exist, either? So generally, existence exists in order for there to be a reason for existence to exist, but this in-order-for relation answers the question in a circular way. This renders the question, "Why does existence exist?" suspicious.

In set theory, we tend to reject Occam's razor in favor of a principle of plenitude: if something is possibly actual, it is actually possible, and the possibility itself is a somehow existent thing (the facts about what is possible are facts that exist), wherefore the closest thing to a reason for something to exist that we have is, "It does exist somewhere, 'because' it could exist at all." So we tend to dislike theories about set theory that are "restrictive," like the infamous proposition that V = L. This is because if V = L, then measurable cardinals wouldn't exist. We tend to really dislike that implication.

Unfortunately or not, different principles establish the existence of potentially inconsistent things, so we end up gravitating towards a multiverse description, where it's not that there is a plenitudinous reality because all things exist in some single cosmological context, but because all things that can exist somewhere, exist in a "somewhere" that is otherwise closed off from other "somewheres."

In the book Axiogenesis, the author (Nicholas Rescher) offers an answer to, "Why does existence exist?" in terms of, "Because it ought to," but he also thinks the more intelligible issue is, "Why does existence exist in the particular way that it does?" That's the question that the principle of plenitude is more directly answering. The is-because-ought idea could be thought of along these lines: "Ought implies can; some cans presuppose some ises; so if there is an ought that implies a can that presupposes an is, and that ought is, so is the other is." (Forgive me.)

EDIT:

You might say, "Why do why-questions exist?" is the issue at hand. But then the answer might seem "obvious."

Also, though, re: materialism, the proposition, "Materialism cannot answer the question of why existence exists," might be true, but is it also true that, "If a theory cannot answer the question of why existence exists, then that theory is false"? Couldn't materialism be true even if there were some questions it couldn't answer? As per Goedelian incompleteness or Fitch's paradox of knowability, we might suspect that no matter the -ism we settle on, we'll never have an -ism that answers every question. I think the real problem with materialism as a concept is similar to the problem with the concept of existence: it's not necessarily clear enough. Is it the thesis that everything is extended in space? What does that do to the scientific hypothesis of emergent spacetime? I mean, does materialism contradict the possibility of this hypothesis? Yet materialism intuitively seems aligned with scientism. So do we define materialism as, "Only if something can be proven to exist scientifically, does that thing exist"? Does science have anything to do with proving existence claims as such? (I don't doubt that we can formulate some existence claims as scientific propositions, but this will depend on a perhaps arbitrary decision about the use of the word 'existence.')
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Post by Fist and Faith »

I'm thinking maybe there's no such thing as non-existence. I mean everything. Sure, it's possible for any specific thing to not exist. Every specific thing didn't used to exist, and won't again, eventually.

But nothing? It's just a concept we have. Doesn't mean there was ever nothing, then something. Doesn't mean there could be nothing at some future point. Maybe it's a false dichotomy. Maybe existence is the only state.
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Post by peter »

Getting into the realms of whether questions, ideas and the like exist is of course a valid (and related) line of thought - but not one that is perhaps quite the same as that of why/how the situations of nothing and something are related to each other. I can definitely conceive of a nothing so absolute that it would be inconceivable that anything could arise from it - we are talking a nothing that has no extension in space, no duration in time, no quantum fluxes or vacuums to play with, no void, even no nothing (an interesting paradox in itself) - and on this frame of thought can fully understand the argument that the mere presence of something now implies something always.

But scaling it back in a sort of Cartesian stripping away, we come unavoidably to the Cogito, the only being I can have assurance of is my own - and even this is subject to doubt. And yesterday it also seemed to me that logically, the same rules must apply to me (in terms of my being) as to any other being (in the broadest sense). Once having existence (if I assume 'I think, therefore I am') how then could I be other?

After all, what am/is 'I'. A self aware collection of fallible memories in association with a constantly changing accretion of matter, that changes (and is subject to just the same ontological questions) as the ship whose individual planks are replaced one by one until none of the original remain. And if I have died once then I have died a million times already and still I have being and it is inconceivable that I should not. The I of yesterday is dead just as assuredly as the I of tomorrow has yet to be born and yet I have being; how then and at what arbitrary point will this change? From whence could I spring from nothing (or dissolve back into it) any more than anything else of physical manifestation that has both extension and duration. Change certainly - but that I know intimately already. But annihilation.......nah, makes no sense to me.
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Post by Fist and Faith »

peter wrote:- we are talking a nothing that has no extension in space, no duration in time,
To be more thorough, we are talking no space in which anything could have extension, no time in which anything could have duration. Space and time are things that exist, after all, so, if we're talking about absolute non-existence, they would be gone, also. I'm not sure I can really wrap my mind around the absence of even those things. Not talking about an empty void with nothing in it. Not talking about time endlessly passing with nothing aging. The absence of them means no field in which to notice the absence of everything else. No big, empty thing. Not even a void, since, to my thinking, that would have boundaries.
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Post by peter »

Absolutely Fist - my phraseology was adrift rather than my intended meaning. Space-time is most definitely something - the ultimate something really.

It occurs to me that I'm becoming something like Buddhist cross Platonist in my thinking; that behind the 'I' is a more fundamental being only guessed at via the shadow it casts. That being (in the broader sense of existing) is as infinite as any other manifestation of being (in fact intrinsic to it in its connectedness), and the I that sits in front of it in the main part an illusory fabrication.
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Post by Zarathustra »

peter wrote: The closest thing that the theorists have come up with in answering the question (and the approach that the celebrated Stephen Hawking took) was that it was the inherent instability of the nothingness/quantum flux that causes irregularities to pop in and out of existence, one of such that got caught (as it were) n the existence side of the equation and resulted in the universe we see today. This of course falls flat because the quantum flux cannot in any sense be considered as nothing. Nothing is, well, nothing; there cannot be irregularities or instabilities within it to flip this way or that. The possibility or capacity for change of any form requires that 'something' be there in which the change may occur.
But if you agree with WF that we can't understand "nothing," then who are you to say that this quantum flux can't be nothing?

Personally, I'm not convinced that we can't understand "nothing." It's the simplest concept of all, right? There's literally nothing to it! Maybe we can't picture it, or describe it, but that's just fine because it wouldn't look or seem like anything anyway. It's the absence of even the possibility of properties or objects that can have properties.
Mighara Sovmadhi wrote:In set theory, we tend to reject Occam's razor in favor of a principle of plenitude: if something is possibly actual, it is actually possible, and the possibility itself is a somehow existent thing (the facts about what is possible are facts that exist), wherefore the closest thing to a reason for something to exist that we have is, "It does exist somewhere, 'because' it could exist at all."
I agree, and we don't even have to talk about set theory to get there. Quantum theory implies this, too, and it's backed up by experiment. Reality exists as a "wave of probability" which we collapse into distinct actualities through measurement and observation.

But speaking even more generally, something could not exist if it were not first possible. I don't mean just its bare existence, but also its specific form; both its "whatness" and "thatness." So this possibility already existed as a feature or condition of the universe, a structure of possibility that we describe with scientific laws. The many possible paths that a particle may take are already "mapped out" as possibilities within a structure of relations, even before they are realized. These structures are what scientific laws are attempting to discover and describe. But they already exist prior to our discovery, and they exist in a much more permanent and fundamental way than the particles whose behavior they dictate, because the actuality of these particles does not become realized until they are measured (or otherwise interact with their surroundings). So in a sense, actuality itself is a "less real" (or perhaps "derivative") form of being than possibility. [Of course, a many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory casts doubt of this kind of reasoning, because every possibility is also an actuality in some world.]
Fist and Faith wrote:I'm thinking maybe there's no such thing as non-existence. I mean everything. Sure, it's possible for any specific thing to not exist. Every specific thing didn't used to exist, and won't again, eventually.

But nothing? It's just a concept we have. Doesn't mean there was ever nothing, then something. Doesn't mean there could be nothing at some future point. Maybe it's a false dichotomy. Maybe existence is the only state.
I like this. It's damn near a tautology to say that nothing could not exist, right? If it existed, it would be something, not nothing. So it's not even a possibility. Therefore it's impossible for there to be any other state than existence, just as you say.

Another way to think of nothingness is that it's the opposite of BOTH "whatness" AND "thatness." When we look at a tree, we are simultaneously aware of what it is and that it exists. A conceptual or possible tree is not the same as an actual or existing tree, obviously. The "thatness" of any tree falls away into nothingness once it dies, decays, and becomes something else--some other "what" (e.g. decayed wood). The tragedy of death is not merely that a particular entity no longer exists, but rather that it is transformed into something else: a corpse, a memory, a legacy, etc. Within existence, no thing ever really ceases to be, it merely ceases to be what it once was. Nothingness, therefore, could be understood as not only the absence of the actuality of things existing, but even the possibility.

So, "why is there something rather than nothing" is really asking "why are things possible?"
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Post by peter »

A book I read recently put it this; that the goal of science must be to answer how something could arise from nothing (rather than the more conventional 'why is there something......). If it cannot do this (and I do not believe that it has been able to do so to date) then we have to conclude that something has been the case ad infinitum and that nothing never has been. But does this even seemingly logical statement hold water? Does it not assume that the same rules apply as pertain to the nature of being (as we also assume to be the case for everything pertaining to the physical laws we formulate) irrespective of the when and where within (and even beyond) the possibly infinite confines (yes, I know - that was deliberate...... ;) ) of our universe.

I have come across theorists who answer the question of this thread by dismissing it; "The question has no meaning", they say - but this is simply wrong. The question certainly has meaning because I can ask it and you can understand it. I contend that if a universe can arise from nothing, then that nothing has to have something that is amenable to change such that it no longer fulfills the criteria for being nothing - so the fact that we have something draws us inexorably to the conclusion that nothing cannot exist. And if that is not the ontological argument flipped on its head then I don't know what is!

:lol:

Edit; And even if we do accept that something has been the case ad infinitum doesn't this bring on problems of its own? Don't we already know from mathematics that infinities are slippery things: that they may be infinite but still have boundaries (think our own universe as a possible example). That, mobius strip like we may conceive of them folding around on themselves and becoming something other than which we intend them to be. I have a feeling that even the 'infnite something' argument is a rabbit hole that once you go down lands you on the back of a turtle, and you know what happens once you continue your journey on from that place.........

;)
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Post by Fist and Faith »

Even if there was ever absolutely nothing, if something came into being, then there had to have been potential in that nothing. Which means it wasn't really nothing. Potential is something.

There is also the thought that, before time began, it is meaningless to discuss whether or not anything existed. There is no "before time". It's easy to think of the instant before time began. But, really, there couldn't be any such thing. "Before" requires time. If there wasn't any time, there was no before.

On the other hand, if there was a universe before ours, and the previous ended at the same instant ours began, then we can discuss what happened before time began. One-time ending the instant the next time began. Of course, that just leaves us in the same position of infinite existence
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Post by peter »

I've been digging around to see if science has actually made any progress in respect of answering this question and the result seems to be not really. The sites and articles that purportedly deal with the topic always give you a potted history of the universe (often accompanied by how we got to this stage of knowledge), but when it comes to the nub, the emperor has no clothes. It seems we are at present, pretty much where we started. Science may one day answer the question - but not today.

:)

I've decided to aim for an altogether easier target; how does one attain peace of mind?

;)
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Post by wayfriend »

How can you write a scientific treatise about nothing?
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Fist and Faith
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Post by Fist and Faith »

wayfriend wrote:How can you write a scientific treatise about nothing?
Hence the lack of them.
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
-Paul Simon
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