Time to build synapses: Why is there something instead of nothing?

[armyowalgreens]

I thought I'd post a mind-numbing question that my friend posted on Facebook. I know it sounds cliche, but it's a fairly interesting question.


Here is our discussion so far...

Friend-"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Myself-"what is nothing?"

Friend-"Nothing is the absence of anything. If it is in and of itself anything, it is a concept or a state of a affairs (which is not something physical). It may be that there is no alternative to that something must exist, but that nothing might exist is thought-provoking, if anything because it leads to questions about contingent and necessary beings."

Myself-"Humans are not omniscient. Therefore we are relativists. Everything is in comparison to something else. Even nothing is in comparison to something.

So when we get to a question that deals with something absolute, it is hard, if not impossible, for us to even conceive the premise of the question. If we follow the question of "what is nothing" by answering "Nothing is the absence of anything"...what is anything?

Even if we were to construct an answer, how could it possibly be unequivocally true? Our perspectives are relative.

Very thought-provoking indeed. It seems that most abstract discussions like this are circular in logic. There is no beginning or end."

So, what do you guys think?

[Skittles]

1. I think your friend needs to put down the pipe

[armyowalgreens]

2. We are both philosophy majors. This is what we do for fun.

[DaveinJapan]

4. Another degree (or two)

down the drain.



j/k :P

[armyowalgreens]

10. My philosophy professor once said that a philosopher is the most useful useless person in existence.

But, I'm also a political science major. However, I'm not sure if that helps at all.

[sam sarrha]

3. if yo guys get bored you could turn that into a book of Koans

[DaveinJapan]

5. A better question...

Friend-"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

DaveinJapan- "rather, why is there mostly nothing?"

[armyowalgreens]

8. But what is "nothing". If we can pin-point the location of "nothing", is it really nothing?

[willing dwarf]

13. I think you should head towards quantum physics with these questions.

String theory, multiple dimensional universes that's the stuff you're driving toward.

Of course why is a very different that what in this case.

[eridani]

6. What is the sound of one hand clapping?

What was your face before your parents were born?

Why a duck?

[DaveinJapan]

30. Why a crocoduck?

[DaveinJapan]

31. This was supposed to go after the "why a duck?" comment...

I'm still trying to get used to how these posts follow each other here...I *thought* I put it in the right place?



(if I *thought* so, why was it *not* so????)

[willing dwarf]

7. Have you read Hegel?

It isn't that nothing is not present, but simply that we cannot experience nothing. A being cannot be and no be at the same time (unless you are Schrodinger's Cat) and therefore, so long as one experiences something, one cannot experience nothing.

If you believe there is a dialectic of consciousness --where subject (self, for want of a better word) identifies and then synthesizes object (other) to form a new enlarged subject that goes on to comprehend another "other" and so absorb and synthesize that too... If that's your approach to being and consciousness, well you can see that there's no space for non-being in that equation.

My own take on the question is that to experience "nothing" would to become swallowed into nothing, and so to become nothing out of which nothing can then become something. Nothingness cannot be.

[armyowalgreens]

9. Good answer. I have not read a lot of Hegel yet.

[eShirl]

11. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. You gotta have something

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_DV54ddNHE

(that's one serious fro)

[Control-Z]

45. That answer

took longer (to be posted) than I expected. :)

[snot]

12. At this point, be glad there's something (you, us), and try to do "something" with it.

Sorry, didn't mean to be snarky . . . .

I do think your original question is worth exploration; but I don't think it can be resolved by any intelligence in this dimension; and others can be.

[willing dwarf]

23. I like this answer

Seems to me it's the person over 30's answer.

I agree-- and once I accepted there was something I decided I'd try to be part of making more something, positive approach to living. Gardening, sewing, writing, making stuff. All part of being.

[Ikonoklast]

14. "What?"

[armyowalgreens]

16. lol

[eShirl]

15. this reminds me of talking with someone who believes in a Creator

If the Creator created everything-that-exists, who or what created the Creator?

[Fumesucker]

20. Which is the subject of Asimov's "The Last Question"..

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

[MannyGoldstein]

17. It's Not Clear That There Actually *Is* Anything...

"Anyone who says that they understand Quantum Mechanics does not understand Quantum Mechanics"
-Richard Feynman

After spending some time with hard core physics, the only thing that's clear is that nothing's clear. The inconceivable happens all around us.

This all may be a dream.

[armyowalgreens]

21. Oh believe me, I have been in "dream: discussions for hours upon hours at a time.

In fact, this entire situation could be a dream. You posted about the dream scenario because my brain plucked it out and constructed an alternative being, you, to restate it in order to reaffirm to myself that I am correct.

But who is "I"...if I am the figment of someones imagination, am I real? Is the dreamer real? Are we both real?

[MannyGoldstein]

24. I'm Pretty Sure I'm Not Real

I need at least one more cup of coffee to make the transition. I don't care *what* Descartes has to say on the matter...

[Beam Me Up]

38. We're all figments of our imagination -- if by "I" we mean the voice in our head.

The brain is silent. It doesn't make a sound. So, as I think about these words before I type them, what is this "voice" "I" "hear" if not "imagined"? And what is "imagination" if not a form of "dreaming"?

It seems to me that before we can ask WHY (whatever), we need to ask "how do I know"? Deconstructing that question may take a life time. What "knows"? What IS "knowing"?

Most importantly, it seems to me, would be the ability to move beyond the abstract and theoretical into the realm of direct observation of the formation of this complexity we call "self" or "I". Can I know "myself," my state, directly? Can I put aside all assumptions, all conditioning (such as language systems), and just BE and observe this being as it is?

Attention is the key to "knowing". We only "know" that toward which our attention is turned. With practice in observation we may come to see that "attention" has "qualities". My ordinary attention is primarily commanded and influenced by "things" exterior to "myself". But if I wish to "know myself" attention must turn toward itself. Little in the "outer world" influences us in this direction. But if attention to attention has frequency and duration, this produces a new quality of attention; a "second" attention. The object of this second attention is "ordinary" attention and its awareness of it. To be "understood" or "known" a quality of persistence needs to arise because, with observation, what is seen is that this "second attention" is fragile and quickly lost. It is more a possibility than an actuality. But knowing this shows me something about myself: My ordinary attention is mostly habitually focused "outward" into a perpetual reinforcement of the socialized and conditioned self/world construct. I operate AS IF "I Am" but, absent "second attention," this is more an attitude or assumption than an actuality. "I" do not "know" "myself" but merely operate "as if" I do, "as if" "I am".

With the development of a second attention this changes. "I" now see "I" as somewhat distinct from "myself". "Myself" is an imaginative self/world construct; necessary for social interaction; but it is not "I" which is, fundamentally, a (potentially) developing quality of attention.

If this becomes something known directly through direct experience and observation (as opposed to just reading or thinking about it), now the question WHY (anything) and the subsequent inquiry as to the nature of that question, takes on new meaning. I actually KNOW something to begin with directly, through on-going observation. I understand that the difference between "something" and "nothing" is, on one hand, absolute, and on the other hand, relative; and these two possibilities exist non-dually. It IS. But "it" only "is" if "I Am".

[Fumesucker]

18. A corollary of the anthropic principle..

If a universe develops in such a manner as to produce an observer then it must have an observer in it, an observer is something so the anthropic universe is never empty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

The most thorough extant study of the anthropic principle is the book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow, a cosmologist, and Frank J. Tipler, a mathematical physicist. This book sets out in great detail the many known anthropic coincidences and constraints, including many found by its authors. While the book is primarily a work of theoretical astrophysics, it also touches on quantum physics, chemistry, and earth science. An entire chapter argues that homo sapiens is, with high probability, the only intelligent species in the Milky Way.

The book begins with an extensive review of many topics in the history of ideas the authors deem relevant to the anthropic principle, because the authors believe that principle has important antecedents in the notions of teleology and intelligent design. They discuss the writings of Fichte, Hegel, Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead, and the omega point cosmology of Teilhard de Chardin. Barrow and Tipler carefully distinguish teleological reasoning from eutaxiological reasoning; the former asserts that order must have a consequent purpose; the latter asserts more modestly that order must have a planned cause. They attribute this important but nearly always overlooked distinction to an obscure 1883 book by L. E. Hicks

<...>

Fred Hoyle invoked anthropic reasoning to make a remarkable prediction of an astrophysical phenomenon. He reasoned from the prevalence on earth of life forms whose chemistry was based on carbon-12 atoms, that there must be an undiscovered resonance in the carbon-12 nucleus facilitating its synthesis in stellar interiors via the triple-alpha process. He then calculated the energy of this undiscovered resonance to be 7.6 million electron-volts.<36><37> Willie Fowler's research group soon found this resonance, and its measured energy was close to Hoyle's prediction.

[armyowalgreens]

22. You know I went to a lecture on the anthropic principle...

Unfortunately, I was very hungry and tired. So I did not pay attention at all.

I'll have to read up on it some more.

[conscious evolution]

19. Hi Boojatta

So this is your sock puppet?

:hide:
:rofl:

[zeemike]

25. The nature of this existence is duality

Everything has it's opposite for a reason. For without it noting could exist.
There could be no light without darkness no up without a down, no right without a left.
So Noting exists so that something can.

[Mari333]

26. drop the concept of duality and you will be fine.

there is no 'there' there.

[mwb970]

27. The question is ill-formed.

To ask "why" implies that there is a "reason", but there is no objective indication that anything in the Universe happens for a "reason" as we understand it.

The question cannot be answered, because it cannot in fact be asked.

[armyowalgreens]

28. The question implies no such thing...

Simply because "why" is used does not imply intelligent reasoning.

I could ask why the ice melted when it was taken out of the freezer. That has a logical answer and does not imply intelligent reasoning.

[mwb970]

34. Um....huh?

Your response does not compute.

I said that if you ask why X happens (regardless of what X is), you must believe that there is a reason why X happened, otherwise the question "Why?" makes no sense. The question "Why?" is intended to elicit that reason, which is assumed to exist. (Indeed, "Why?" is a rewording of "For what reason?".) Hence, to ask the question "Why?" is to implicitly state that there is a reason. In cases where there is in fact no reason, the question is thus ill-formed.

I don't think I can be any clearer than this, sorry.

[armyowalgreens]

40. There can be a "reason" without implying intelligent meddling...

Which is what you must be thinking. Like by asking why, that means we are somehow asking God for the answer as to why it did something.

That is not true.


Why did the ice melt? Because it was exposed to temperatures higher than the melting point of water.

Why does an apple fall to the earth when it detaches from a tree? Because of the force of gravity.

[mwb970]

42. Very strange.

We seem to be in two different conversations. Enjoy yours, I'm done with mine.

[armyowalgreens]

46. Cheer up. Being condescending and edgy will only kill you early.

"In cases where there is in fact no reason, the question is thus ill-formed."


To state that there is "no reason" for why there is something instead of nothing is, in fact, completely incorrect. You have no evidence that there is no reason. According to Newtons third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Which means that there is a never ending chain of "why"...

It is perfectly reasonable to believe that there is a logical explanation as to why there is something instead of nothing. I'm not quite sure why you aren't getting that. There is nothing odd or ill-formed about the question.

[rug]

29. Get off Facebook and read Sartre.

"Vertigo is anguish to the extent that I am afraid not of falling over the precipice, but of throwing myself over."

[datasuspect]

43. and a primer on presocratic philosophers.

[Soylent Brice]

32. K&R

great conversation here. thanks everyone. my brain has been thoroughly flexed this morning.

[dysfunctional press]

33. "Very thought-provoking indeed..."

not really.

[trotsky]

35. Because if there was nothing, we wouldn't be around to care.

I mean, really.

Douglas Adams put it well:

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise."

[Winterblues]

36. Nothing is itself something or the word would not exist.

True nothing is incomprehensible to most people who insist upon labels to describe.

[Javaman]

37. I submit Billy Preston for the answer...

"nothing from nothing leaves nothing. you gotta have something, if you want to be with me".

[lumberjack_jeff]

39. Because the simulation programmers wanted that way.

http://www.simulation-argument.com/brueckner.pdf

[UndertheOcean]

41. Those are thoughts I am grappling with since my birth.

you are my kind of guy.

[abumbyanyothername]

44. It is possible, but not easy

to experience nothing.

However, most of the time the mind keeps re-cycling thoughts and experiences. Amusing itself while it keeps the synapses firing.

I am not going to try and summarize a course in Zen here.

But if you want to freak your friend out offer irrefutable proof of life after death. Us. I mean, we're alive now. And what were we before we were born?

[moggie]

47. Why does there have to be a "why"?

As I understand it, current thinking is that the universe, at a fundamental level, is random and probabilistic. Even in what we consider to be a vacuum, there is a constant flux of "virtual particle" pairs being spontaneously formed and then annihilating. If you asked a physicist why any particular vacuum fluctuation appeared, they would reply that it's entirely random and without cause. Similarly for radioactive decay: there's simply a certain probability that a radioactive nucleus might decay at any point, and nothing triggers it. Shit just happens.

We seem to be hard-wired to look for causes for everything, and there's probably an evolutionary benefit to this trait. But is there any justification for thinking that the belief "everything has a cause" is correct at all scales and in all situations? Perhaps the fact that there is something rather than nothing is just a random accident?

[Buns_of_Fire]

48. But perhaps more germane to our current state of enlightenment: Why is there air?

(Old Bill Cosby fans will know the answer to this one.:))