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Author | Topic: The Ultimate Question - Why is there something rather than nothing? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: The question is not on the lines of "could things actually have been different", but "why are things this way ?", a quite different question. Have a quick read of this short article, when you've got time, Paul, and see what you agree and disagree with. Q1 is the O.P. question. Q2 seems more like what you have in mind, and the author's way of separating them is interesting. This might help clear up some confusion. Busy now but I'll answer a couple of points in your last post later.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: bluegenes writes: Do you not agree that "nothingness" as an alternative reality is necessarily a human fantasy? Do you consider it to be evidence based? That's irrelevant. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find an academic article on the O.P. subject that discusses this point in relation to the question, and considers it very relevant. Of course it's relevant.
PaulK writes: bluegenes writes:
As I have argued, that is your misunderstanding of the question. If you haven't yet understood that the O.P. question drags abstracts into it, I doubt if you ever will. The possibility of the existence of nothing as an alternative to something is implied in the question. Don't you agree?
PaulK writes: bluegenes writes: And speaking of a mess, why did you make the comparison of the OOL to the O.P. question, when it should have been obvious that one can be answered by "something", while the other by its nature can't? A massive difference. Because it is an irrelevant difference, in a comparison I did not claim to be exact. Irrelevant???!!!
PaulK writes: bluegenes writes: Do you regard my "Kansas/Oz" point as invalid? And if so, why? I don't see it as relevant. So far as I can tell it was just dragged in to support your dismissal of the question, based on your reframing of the question. Since I regard that reframing as dishonest spin, why should I care about any argument that relies on it ? Irrelevant again!
"Why does Kansas exist, rather than the Land of Oz". The analogy turns the general concepts into specifics, but I don't see any basic reframing.
PaulK writes: dishonest spin..... Strong words, indeed.....
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
Straggler writes: If think I would rephrase the OP to question to something like.... Why are there possible alternatives to nothing rather than absolutely nothing at all? I'd like to examine a straight "Can nothing be an alternative without being?"
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: bluegenes writes: The possibility of the existence of nothing as an alternative to something is implied in the question. Don't you agree? No, I don't. The question as asked does not rule out necessity as a possible explanation, even by implication. Your answer doesn't make sense.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: You mean that you don't understand it. No. I meant what I said.
PaulK writes: The question does not deny - even by implication - that it might be the case that it is necessary that something exists. I know. Look up the word possibility.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: Then you know that the answer makes sense - and answers the question as written. The question is clear. You say that you disagree, then make a statement that doesn't contradict mine. That doesn't make sense.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: bluegenes writes: The possibility of the existence of nothing as an alternative to something is implied in the question. Don't you agree? No, I don't. The question as asked does not rule out necessity as a possible explanation, even by implication. You answer that you disagree. You then state (correctly) that the "question as asked does not rule out necessity as a possible explanation, even by implication". That doesn't explain "no I don't", which was why I said you weren't making sense. From the perspective of the questioner, the two statements are compatible. So, why do you disagree that the question implies the possibility of the existence of nothing as an alternative to something?
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: Not sure what two statements you're referring to so I'll pass on that bit until you explain. What I was thinking was that, as the questioner doesn't know the answer to his question, then both "the possibility of nothingness" and "the necessity of something" could be answers from his point of view. But the question itself may not be answerable by "necessity", although it would be nice to be able to do so. Even if we appeared to have a good case for necessity on one level (from future physics, perhaps), the questioner can always say "But why are we in a reality in which something is necessary?" Read that way, the question seems as though it's always unanswerable in any conclusive way. In this abstract, the author calls the Leibniz version of the question the "Primordial Existential Question" (PEQ). Do you think that he's reading the question in the wrong way?
Adolf Grnbaum abstract
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: That's a DIFFERENT question. Yes. But Leibniz also asked: "Why is there something rather than nothing", and asked for "a full reason why there should be any world rather than none". Grnbaum approaches all three questions in a similar way. These questions are not your preferred "Why are things the way they are?" The clause "rather than nothing" is central to the O.P. question. A specific alternative to the current reality, "nothingness", is suggested. Grnbaum attacks the "nothing" alternative. Some of the things he says are similar to some things I've been saying. He sees "nothingness" as being largely a religious invention, and claims that people have it the wrong way round. The Christian philosophers who ask the question tend to express amazement that there's something, and to regard "nothing" as simpler and more natural. He argues the case that there's no logical reason or empirical reason to perceive nothing as "natural". As I pointed out further up the thread, it's far more reasonable to regard "nothing world" as requiring a creator god then "something world". We have no empirical evidence that it ever could have existed, and it's faulty logic to perceive "nothing" as "easier" than something, as I tried to explain with my forest/not forest analogy. But here's Grnbaum in a brief article making his case.
Grnbaum pdf This is certainly relevant to the way in which the question "Why is there something rather than nothing" comes up on EvC discussion boards like this one.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: Wrong again. Leibniz's question is about why contingent entities exist, which is different in subtle but important ways. Leibniz also asks the O.P. question word for word, and Grnbaum attacks it for the same reason. He realises the importance of the clause "rather than nothing".
"Why is there "x" rather than "y"" is not the same as asking "How did "x" come about". Here's cosmologist Sean Carroll agreeing with Adolf Grnbaum, and reading the question in the same way. Sean Carroll
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: And in the abstract you linked to, Grunbaum is very clear that the question is about contingent entities, which is, as I said, different (because it sweeps the important issue of if and how necessary entities exist under the carpet) Have a read of the pdf that I linked to, and you'll see what I mean about Liebniz asking three questions, including the O.P. one, and how Grunbaum's answer applies to that very question. (That seems to be the very same lecture that Carroll's blogging about, BTW).
PaulK writes: Again, their answer is great for defusing the claim that we must assume some additional cause, but it really doesn't answer the question. It makes the case that there is no reason to believe that "somethingness" itself requires a cause or explanation. That the question is a fabrication which invents this exotic, magical world called nothingness, and then asks why it isn't there. Why the hell should it be? Why should the Land of Oz be there rather than Kansas? When you mentioned OOL as a comparison, it seems that you might be thinking of the question as "how did our particular 'something' come about?" - whether life, the known universe as it is or whatever else. Such questions are significantly different.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: I've now read it and Grunbaum is really clear that Lebniz was talking about contingent entities. Yes, in that essay he's addressing the "contingent" version, which is what theists always come up with when they realise that the more general one (our O.P. question) cannot be answered by "God", because god's something. But that's not why I linked to the article. It's because the line that Grunbaum takes towards the "null world" applies to both questions. The "null worlds" aren't quite the same, but the same arguments work for both. I've been taking a similar line here, but you accuse me of misreading the question when I do so.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
Dr Adequate writes: The question of whether it is more probable than something seems remarkably ill-conceived. What would that even mean? --- it suggests a state in which there was neither something nor nothing and one of them was somehow selected. That view would mean that every thing is always contingent. The theists make the mistake of seeing nothing as simple and therefore "easier" for reality to achieve than something. Hence the probability mistake. Inventing alternative realities, then asking why this one is here in their place, can be seen as a rather silly thing to do, as I've suggested earlier in the thread. Regardless of the reality suggested, the question can never be answered.
Why is this world as it is, rather than being heaven? I'd never heard of Grunbaum until the day before I mentioned him here, but I was very pleased that the first modern philosopher I found discussing the question was viewing it in a similar way. We don't really have any empirical or logical reason to propose "nothing world". It's our myth, like heaven.
Dr Adequate writes: But unless something can be shown to be necessary my original question still stands. I think that the question as asked in the O.P. probably has built in unanswerability. It would innately apply itself to any answer given. If we made a case for "x" being necessary, the question becomes "why "x" world rather than nothing world". Unanswerability of that kind is usually seen as being a problem in the question (a bit like asking a bachelor why he beats his wife). So, Leibniz rephrases it as: "Why are there contingent things rather than no contingent things. That leaves it open for a "necessary "x" answer.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: It doesn't "work" to provide a real explanation,merely hinting that the "brute fact" explanation is quite possibly correct. The question (both forms) accepts the fact of there being something rather than nothing, so what is "brute fact" actually saying?
PaulK writes: Grunbaum is only interested in defusing the question as an argument for God, not in finding the answer. Did you miss the bit in which he dismisses the O.P. version as an invalid question? If a question is unanswerable, it can still be examined.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
PaulK writes: His claim that it is invalid seems to be dealing with the argument for God, not with the question considered more generally. No. He suggests that the broad O.P. version is essentially circular. It will ask itself of any answer given.
In fact it really only seems to be saying that even if God were a good answer the argument would not have much force. Which is a valid point, but very far from being a valid criticism of the question considered without the religious apologetic baggage piled around it. He implies that the "null world", in this case the world void of contingent beings, is an idea that we've inherited culturally from religions that have a creation ex nihilo mythology. You, I, and Adequate may not be religious, but it's still in our cultural heritage. I think it's important when considering the question to keep at the front of our minds the point that "nothingness" is necessarily a human invention, and not one based on observation. We can ask ourselves the O.P. question after inventing nothingness, or save ourselves the trouble by not inventing it!
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