Well, yes it does. The fact that my view doesn't have the problems that your view does pretty clearly indicates that the problem is at your end, not mine.
The O.P. question is problematic for everyone. But there's no point in the thread if no-one even attempts to find a more satisfactory answer than "brute fact".
PaulK writes:
I'd say that the fact that he doesn't see a logical contradiction is pretty clear evidence that his view is close to mine rather than yours.
"Nothing" being internally consistent just means we can't find an easy answer to the question on that basis. It would have to be internally consistent if a logical contradiction is a thing. Adequate's point was that it's impossible for nothing to contain to contradictory "things".
So, are you sure he'll be closer to your view? We'll see.
PaulK writes:
I'm pretty sure that finding a way to call a state where no concrete entities exist "something" rather than "nothing" is not the point of the question at all.
Remember, by my definition of things, it's you who's turning nothing into something by filling it with things.
And what is the point of the question, by the way?
PaulK writes:
So far as I can see your arguments are nothing more than the trivial playing of semantic games which go nowhere.
Why isn't it a "semantic game" to have to exclude some things from "everything" in order to make your point?
But misconstruing the question is not a way to get an answer.
I agree entirely.
PaulK writes:
bluegenes writes:
"Nothing" being internally consistent just means we can't find an easy answer to the question on that basis. It would have to be internally consistent if a logical contradiction is a thing. Adequate's point was that it's impossible for nothing to contain two contradictory "things".
Given that you are misconstruing the question in order to create a logical contradiction, it's highly unlikely that he agrees with you.
Disagreeing with you on the definitions of something and nothing is not misconstruing the question. And I'll ask you to demonstrate your powers of telepathy if you keep attributing motives to me.
PaulK writes:
bluegenes writes:
Remember, by my definition of things, it's you who's turning nothing into something by filling it with things.
Of course that isn't true, since I am not adding any "things" at all. All the "adding" comes from your definitions, therefore it's you doing it.
Please don't fantasize about "my" definitions. I didn't invent the commonly understood meaning of the words involved, and I didn't write the O.E.D.
PaulK writes:
bluegenes writes:
And what is the point of the question, by the way?
To find out where explanation stops, the most basic level of existence.
It's from physics, not philosophy, that such things might be found out. You don't find out things by selecting definitions from one subculture.
PaulK writes:
bluegenes writes:
Why isn't it a "semantic game" to have to exclude some things from "everything" in order to make your point?
Because it is honestly understanding the question rather than twisting it to dismiss it with a trivial "answer" that tells us nothing of any interest.
Like "brute fact" you mean?
BTW, don't get too serious over "nothing". It is, after all, entirely a human invention.
THen it follows that you would also agree that any interpretation of the question that leaves it trivially answerable - both in the sense that the answer is obvious, and in the sense that the answer itself is trivial and tells us nothing - should be regarded as highly suspect.
I think you've got me wrong in some ways, and I'm sure the confusion's largely my fault. The fact that I can literally and correctly answer the O.P. question "because only something can be", does not mean I think I've solved the problem of existence, and actually demonstrated the necessity of "something". I'd be famous had I done that! It's just a shot across the bows, and highlights the difficulty of language in relation to discussing "nothing" as much as anything else.
PaulK writes:
Of course it is NOT a matter of simple disagreement over definitions, it is a disagreement over the definitions to be used in understanding the question. And since your interpretation is highly suspect (see above) there are good grounds for thinking that you do misconstrue the question, and it is certain that your interpretation does lead to a non-productive logical contradiction.
The definitions certainly shouldn't be arbitrary, and we both seem to be claiming each other's are. In order to decide what a "thing" is, the best method is to test against the concept of absolute nothing.
You wanted to use "state" in relation to nothing. So, if we take states, put them nowhere for no time, what do we get? No states. Nothing. Just as with a horse placed nowhere for no time, and we have no horse.
A useful way of looking at absolute nothing is as if it were a black hole. It'll destroy any "thing", and turn it to no-thing.
Try "reality". Put it nowhere for no time, and you're left with nothing.
Nothing is no thing, or non-existence, so any actual thing should be incompatible with it. So, we can test our definitions.
The question about any seeming paradoxes that we come up with is: are they due to the problem of "something beings" trying to deal with absolute nothing in a "something language", or do they really indicate the impossibility of absolute nothing.
I doubt if we can answer that conclusively.
The "absolute nothing" concept is also necessarily our invention as we've only experienced its opposite.
If someone asks you the O.P. question (and it must have happened in your dealings with creationists), they are actually asking "why doesn't this thing I've imagined exist rather than the reality around us". People do this quite often. "Why isn't there heaven on earth" for example.
In a way, it's like going to Kansas, and asking "why is there Kansas rather than the Land of Oz."
There's an element of silliness whenever people ask why there isn't another reality rather than this one.
Speaking of creationists, Jewish mythology starts with our friend absolutely nothing + one thing. Then the thing creates everything else.
This legacy may be one of the reasons that we all have a tendency to take the "nothing" proposition more seriously than we should.
A creationist asking "why is there something rather than nothing" is inadvertantly asking why a world invented by humans doesn't exist rather than the real one. Why the hell should it?
I think you're treating the O.P. question as a serious philosophical question (which it certainly can be - why is there existence, etc.) whereas I have a tendency to treat it as a rather silly question that's fun to discuss.
PaulK writes:
However, that is a rather odd statement coming from someone who has been using philosophical arguments - and not even good ones - in this discussion.
I don't see a line between science and philosophy. Anything concerning reality (and its possible absence as in this case) is the province of science (and philosophy).
Is your idea of good philosophy sticking things into nothing?
Non-existence can't be a reality, not anywhere, and not for a split second.
At the same time, we could never prove that something is necessary, or not on current knowledge, anyway. It'd be front page news if someone did.
BTW, if someone describes another "something" reality, "a world where there's a golden ocean stretching to near infinity" for example, and asks why that doesn't exist rather than this one, we wouldn't be able to answer the question, and you'd presumably end up with "brute fact".
Do you understand why I see people making up alternatives to this world, and then asking why they're not there as rather silly?
The choice of definitions should be about understanding the question as it was meant, not going off into confusing philosophy that misses the point entirely.
Why not state the question as you think it was meant? When I asked this before, you preferred to leave it as it is. Fine. Then it will be taken as written, because no-one can mind read PaulK, and tell what he thinks it means.
PaulK writes:
But you're the one who said that we should look to science rather than philosophy.
That doesn't forbid philosophers from following along behind and doing whatever it is they usually do, does it?
PaulK writes:
Not really. Is science silly
No. Seriously asking why Kansas exists rather than Oz is, though. I was talking about people fantasizing and expecting to be taken seriously. Note my comment that you're probably taking the O.P. question as a serious philosophical one, and that that's fine. I was thinking of when creationists ask such things, without realising what they're really doing.
You've probably heard "scientists believe that something came from nothing". The "nothing" comes from their mythology, and is their requirement, not that of science.
The question is about the existence of concrete entities, about the ultimate explanation of why such things exist.
Why do concrete things exist?
So you disagree with Adequate's dismissal of god as an answer on the basis that he's something (given that some gods have purely abstract descriptions)?
And what point is there in trying to suggest that abstract entities can somehow exist in the absence of concrete entities anyway?
If you did, I missed it, although I think the intent is obvious.
PaulK writes:
Message 182 I'd say that "why existence?" is worse because it is even harder to understand. "Why do things exist?" is better than that. There are two things that tilt me in favour of the original formulation. Firstly, it is explicit about the possibility of nothingness, secondly it is already well-known.
And what point is there in trying to suggest that abstract entities can somehow exist in the absence of concrete entities anyway?
Maybe you should answer that one yourself, since it seems to be central to your argument.
??? It's central to your argument. That's why you've gone to great lengths to separate the concrete from the abstract. You're the one who's supporting the possible existence of a state of nothingness.
You are really, really wrong here. If abstract entities couldn't exist without concrete entities I wouldn't HAVE to make the distinction! The absence of concrete entities would entail the non-existence of abstracts, too. You're the one appealing to abstracts like "reality", "states" or "existence"
We're both accusing each other of the same thing, and I'll explain why. You, and the O.P. question, are inadvertently plying "nothing" with abstracts. If you left it alone, as its non-existent self, a mere negative abstract concept in our minds, it would be happy. But when you suggest it as an alternative to this reality, you turn it into something. An alternative is something, not nothing.
Nothing doesn't exist. It couldn't exist. That's its definition. If people use phrases like "state of nothingness" they are giving poor nothing something to live up to, and it has to become a state, which is something, and belongs with your concrete things.
You are trying to suggest that a non-reality could become a reality.
In past centuries, when the question was asked, people would probably have perceived nothing as a huge void, like space-time empty of everything they could identify as real. That would actually have been what we could call minimal something, or historical nothing in memory of them.
Their question, why is there something rather than nothing, in the way that they might have perceived it, can actually be pretty well answered now.
But there's no reason why there at all. You just do it again and try to claim that I'm doing it. Remember that my understanding of the question just ignores the question of abstracts, and I have given very good reasons for doing just that. That is why the existence of abstracts isn't relevant to my position but it is VERY relevant to yours - you drag up all these abstracta just so that you can say that nothing is something.
That's because I include all things in my something. You chose your definition after I made my point, not before. Like GDR at the beginning of the thread, when he wanted the abstracts he attributed to his god (intelligence etc.) exempted. But they are things, and could not be used to explain the existence of something.
PaulK writes:
States are abstract, not concrete, so there you just have it again. All you are doing is appealing to the existence of abstractions to try to deny the possibility of nothingness. But it doesn't help you because you are misunderstanding the question.
I understand both the question and your version of it, except for one question. Are space, time, and virtual particles "things" for you. Are they concrete?
PaulK writes:
Look back to the definition of "thing" I provided earlier - you will see that your "state" does not come close to fitting it at all.
I know that. I know you've excluded abstract things. But that doesn't make it the standard of the thread, does it? And it doesn't make it any easier for "nothing" to become an alternative reality whether you want alternative realities labeled as things or not, they're still something.
But the reason I asked you about the three things above is that, if you don't consider them things, then you've got the concrete things coming from what you might want to call "nothing" in the way that Krauss described above, and you've got your answer in the nature of quantum mechanics.
But for the O.P., that's no good, because we would be evoking something, however minimal.
Our ancestors would have been impressed, though, because it gets everything they would have considered concrete from apparent invisible nothing.
You don't really know what was going on in my thinking before I replied to you.
True, and I didn't mean to imply that you were doing any deliberately devious goalpost moving. The views are reasonably in keeping with what you were saying early in the thread.
PaulK writes:
But it does show that you are the one who keeps invoking abstracta, which was the point.
It's the question (both versions) that suggests that the abstract concept of absolutely nothing could be the abstract concept of an alternative reality.
I agree that it's a genuinely interesting question for scientists and everyone else. But I think it also relates to something in human psychology, and, as I mentioned before, a hangover from ancient cultural traditions.
There seems to be a tendency to get it the wrong way round. We naturally tend to think that it's something that's difficult to get, and nothing would be easy. We will look at something complicated, like a great forest with all its flora and fora, and our ancestors might think "Wow, this requires a lot of work - must have needed a creator." In fact, the forest will be in exactly the right circumstances to produce a forest, and the difficult thing in those circumstances would be "not forest". That would require a creator.
If we looked at it scientifically, we can say that we've got absolutely no evidence to support the idea that there could actually have been nothing rather than something. But that, almost inevitably, would be the case at present.
Normally, if there's zero evidence to support a proposition, it's not taken seriously, which is why some people's attitude toward the "could have been nothing" hypothesis is a bit strange. Especially religious people.
I suspect, but can't prove it, that pure nothing might be impossible.
Kraus, above, said that there's no longer any "nothing" in modern physics. Even if you think you're looking at it, there'll be a seething mass of virtual particles popping in and out of existence. It doesn't surprise me that Cavediver has made some pretty dismissive comments on it as well.
It's always worth remembering that the concept is our invention, and it wasn't based on evidence.
The question is not on the lines of "could things actually have been different", but "why are things this way ?", a quite different question.
Both. Yes, it's about why are things this way, but the best way to ask that is "why are things this way?" Which is what scientists are always asking and finding answers for things. And sure, we could examine the possibility of other speculative alternative ways that things might have been, but there would be far more alternative "something" realities than just the one "nothing" one.
You seemed to compare it to hypothesis testing in an earlier post, but it isn't that. It does give us quite a good thought exercise - several people mentioned getting headaches - which will happen when we examine the realities of nothing.
One of the traditional answers is based on probabilities. With an infinite number of something worlds against one nothing world, the chances of getting a something world are effectively 1.
But we cannot really know that to be the case, and it doesn't really tell us why things are this way.
The best we get (and it's very interesting) is from the physicists.
But surely you can see that by focussing on the "alternative realities" formulation you are trying to minimise the importance of a very important question. It's a bit like saying that the origin of life isn't an important question because it's just postulating a case where life doesn't exist, but life does exist and there are many different alternative lifeforms that could exist - and many places where life could form.
Think about it. What discipline did I suggest was the appropriate one for possibly getting an answer to the question? Why did I post the Krauss video? Those questions aren't just important, they're automatic. If you want to ask "why are there concrete things", where else could you look for an answer?
In your OOL example, we're allowed to evoke something as the explanation if we can find that something. With the O.P. question, we can't. We can say "brute fact", which is correct, but unsatisfying, so that's why I was examining the proposed alternative. Nothing. In the absence of a technical answer, if that's ever possible, examining "nothing" is the only way to go. Even if it ends up nowhere.
Think up one level. A question can be important and silly and humorous, depending on how it's considered. Looking at a question from an angle that makes it appear ridiculous is not necessarily unproductive. When I compared the O.P. question to someone going to Kansas and asking "why is there Kansas rather than the Land of Oz", it's not just another way of saying "brute fact", but serves to emphasise that the concept of absolute nothing, like Oz, is our invention.
I'm certainly not minimising the importance of cosmology, and OOL hypotheses are something very important and interesting to me personally. Of course we ask ourselves every conceivable question about everything. Why are we here? What exactly is the universe, and how did it come about? Even "is reality an illusion?"
The current problem in relation to the O.P. question is sociological. When it's asked by and examined by people who are genuinely interested in examining reality, then it's fine, and I'm certain that includes you. But it has become widely abused by people who are definitely not interested in that. They ask it in an attempt to support beliefs that they already have. Because (unless taken very literally) it's (at least currently) unanswerable, some religious people seem to see this as a "god of the gaps" opportunity.
Now, speaking of serious, did you understand my forest/not forest analogy? It is, in a sense, your "brute fact", but I wanted to discuss the way we see "something" and "nothing", and particularly, as we're on EvC, the way creationists perceive them.
Picture a conceptual creator god sitting on a line with absolute nothing on one side of him, and something on the other, and ask yourself "which of the two has he created"? The best answer would be that he has created the nothing area.
Our modern perception should be that "nothing" is difficult to get, not something, and it might well actually be true that only a supernatural being could achieve it.
So you're inconsistent. Physics can't deal with your abstractions and you're just admitting that your attempt to write off the problem as simply fantasising an alternative reality doesn't work.
Do you not agree that "nothingness" as an alternative reality is necessarily a human fantasy? Do you consider it to be evidence based?
PaulK writes:
But you weren't really, were you ? Instead you went and dragged the problem of abstract entities into it, ending up with just a mess.
If you haven't yet understood that the O.P. question drags abstracts into it, I doubt if you ever will.
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.
PaulK writes:
When the only effect is to make an important question look unimportant, so it can be dismissed it is hardly productive.
Do you regard my "Kansas/Oz" point as invalid? And if so, why?
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