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Author Topic:   A Proposed Proof That The Origin of The Universe Cannot Be Scientifically Explained
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 14 of 220 (674077)
09-26-2012 11:56 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by nano
09-25-2012 2:26 PM


I think nano's ideas are basically sound, apart from his use of the word "scientifically" which is superfluous.
To explain why there is something rather than nothing, we'd need to point to a cause. What cause? A cause would be a thing, which would make it one of the things we needed to explain. Either we have an infinite regress of causes without a first cause, in which case we haven't answered the question, or we have a first cause without an explanation, in which case we still haven't answered the question.
However, the word "scientifically" is, as I say, superfluous. Because it's not like there's some unscientific answer which would keep us off the horns of the dilemma.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 16 of 220 (674100)
09-26-2012 3:14 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Stile
09-26-2012 12:17 PM


Re: Always?
I certainly agree that it's helpful, and generally the way we do things pretty much all the time.
But is it necessary?
Well, it's what giving an explanation means. If we do something else, we're not doing that.
Can the answer be "there is something rather than nothing because this is the way things are." And then involve a description of how we know that things are "this way?"
You mean something analogous to explaining why diamond is hard by describing its molecular structure? No, I don't think so. That's a different sort of "why" question. (Explaining why diamonds are hard doesn't explain why they exist in the first place.)
Maybe if there doesn't have to be something... then you are correct?
But maybe if there does indeed have to be something... then you could be incorrect if we are able to figure it out?
Well, proving that there has to be something is logically equivalent to proving that a state of affairs in which nothing existed would be self-contradictory: there would have to be two statements which were necessarily true of such a state of affairs which contradicted one another. But what could those statements possibly be about? "There exists x such that P(x) and ~P(x) ..." --- but by hypothesis there does not exist x.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 18 of 220 (674112)
09-26-2012 4:17 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by NoNukes
09-26-2012 3:34 PM


Re: Always?
Well, it depends what you mean by "universe". I was taking it to mean "everything". If we take it to be some well-defined subset of everything, that would be different.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 21 of 220 (674116)
09-26-2012 5:04 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by Son Goku
09-26-2012 4:18 PM


Re: Always?
This would be true in the sense that the existence of our particular universe is not logically necessary. There are mathematically and logically consistent universes which are not our own.
My point is that it would also be consistent to have nothing at all.
In Hawking and Hartle's no boundary proposal, quantum gravity demands that eventually a universe will come into existence from absolutely nothing. So here you do have an origin of the universe, being produced from nothing. Although you could still ask why is "nothing" governed by quantum mechanical laws.
So you can have a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe from nothing, it's the presence of the laws you can't explain.
It depends what you mean by "nothing".

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 23 of 220 (674118)
09-26-2012 5:08 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by nano
09-26-2012 5:00 PM


Logically, when populating a set (i.e. the beginning of the universe), one must start with a "first thing" or you must find your set already populated by "something that has always been there". I can't think of any other complementary, logical states to list.
Well, consider the set ( 0 , ∞ ). It has no first number in it, but it's different from ( -∞ , ∞ ).
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 34 of 220 (674143)
09-26-2012 6:11 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by Tangle
09-26-2012 5:44 PM


It's a complete cliche, but simply saying that there must be a first cause that solves your logical paradox simply introduces another - what caused the 'first' cause?'
But surely that's his point: that eventually we must run up against something inexplicable --- either by virtue of being a first cause, or by virtue of not having a first cause.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 35 of 220 (674146)
09-26-2012 6:13 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by cavediver
09-26-2012 5:32 PM


Re: Always?
And as with the last time this came up, I would suggest that "nothing" is ill-defined ...
"For all x, there does not exist y such that y = x." That seems to meet the case.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 39 of 220 (674152)
09-26-2012 6:33 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by nano
09-26-2012 6:17 PM


Exactly.
Except, as I said, it's invidious to say that there's no scientific explanation. It's like saying: "Black people tell lies". So they do, but why single them out? So far as your reasoning goes, it's not just that there can be no scientific explanation, it's that there can be no explanation.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 41 of 220 (674155)
09-26-2012 6:37 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by cavediver
09-26-2012 6:24 PM


Re: Always?
In the context of mathematics, certainly. My empty universes are merely advanced versions of the empty set. But do we have the luxury of mathematcs to describe this "absolute nothing", in the absence of this "something" that enables the existence of the mathematics?
It's true that if nothing existed, then we couldn't say that nothing existed, but then if things existed but we didn't then we couldn't say that either --- but it would still be a logically consistent state of affairs.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 44 of 220 (674165)
09-26-2012 7:23 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by cavediver
09-26-2012 6:52 PM


Re: Always?
Your example of demonstrating this is to suggest a mathematical definition of the empty set.
No, that's not the definition of the empty set, that's an assertion that nothing exists.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 45 of 220 (674166)
09-26-2012 7:25 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by Percy
09-26-2012 7:17 PM


Yes, that's true, it would not change your argument and it would still be wrong, because scientific processes were used to discover effects that have no apparent cause.
This seems to me to be a non sequitur.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 49 of 220 (674224)
09-27-2012 8:19 AM
Reply to: Message 48 by Phat
09-26-2012 11:55 PM


Re: How far can one really go when the destination is infinite?
Is it not logical that if we must journey an infinite distance, we may never find the answer?
I think that that, again, would rather be his point.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 73 of 220 (674410)
09-28-2012 3:22 PM
Reply to: Message 72 by Stile
09-28-2012 3:05 PM


But it doesn't really explain the laws, they're just taken as a given. And if it could, then we'd want an explanation for the explanation. In the end, we're either going to come up against something which simply is so, and has no explanation in terms of something else, or we're going to have an infinite regress of explanations, in which case this infinite sequence is itself something that just is so.
I think the dilemma is real. Either we have a chain of explanations which doesn't have an ultimate explanation, or we have something which, by virtue of being an ultimate explanation, cannot (by definition) be explained.

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 Message 92 by Stile, posted 09-29-2012 3:22 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 77 of 220 (674417)
09-28-2012 4:33 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by jar
09-28-2012 3:55 PM


Re: But the question...
But the topic just involves the origin of the universe.
Well, it depends what you mean by "universe". If you just mean the bubble of spacetime that expanded in a Big Bang, then that might in principle be explained in terms of something else. But if you mean everything, then we have a problem. If, for example, it was "turtles all the way down", then one would still want to ask: "Why are there all those darn turtles?"

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 104 of 220 (674898)
10-04-2012 2:16 AM
Reply to: Message 92 by Stile
09-29-2012 3:22 PM


Re: Explanations and more
I agree in the sense that at some point there is no explanation for asking "but why..." again. Sort of like the child's game...
My point is that if it turns out there actually is an ultimate explanation, it may be possible for us to understand it.
There might be certain ways in which we could understand it, but we couldn't explain it or it wouldn't be an ultimate explanation.
Of course we can ask "but why..." again, if we want. But it can also get kind of silly to ask such (given certain circumstances).
For example:
"What is the explanation for velocity?"
"Velocity is distance over time."
"But why is velocity disance over time?"
Well, that does have an answer: "By definition".

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Replies to this message:
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