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The "Something/Nothing" question

Cloud_Walker
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Posted 01/07/05 - 05:44 PM:	#1
I just delved into Paul's paper today (only page 15 or so). Right off the bat he got me thinking of that question again: Why is there something instead of nothing? I disagree with some of his critiques of that question, but that is for a later time. I did notice, however, that it (the question) is flawed/pointless in a different way. I'll just copy what I wrote in my journal: ------- "Why is there something instead of nothing?" This is a very fundamental question of metaphysics. It also is a very odd one. I'll state it slightly differently: Why is there something, and why is there not nothing? The general description of "something" is just existence. But also, the general description of "nothing" is nonexistence. So, to ask why nothing does not exist (like "it" is supposed to do), and why something exists is kinda pointless. That is just their most fundamental characteristics (technically, "its 'somethings' most fundamental characteristic, and 'nothing' has no characteristics." But to say it that way is rather confusing. Damn me and my existence-based language and thinking). I have yet to figure out the implications of this analyzation of that question. ------- Thoughts? (I won't get to any responses till probably tomorrow, I'm going out for the night.)
It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music. - Ursula K. Le Guin

Exponent
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Posted 01/07/05 - 06:11 PM:	#2
I'm no expert, but my initial thought is that nonexistence is a concept. The concept does not need to exist for there to in fact be nothing in existence. Actually, the concept must necessarily not exist, if there is to be nothing that exists. I don't see a problem with this, since it is merely a concept. If nothing existed, then nothing existed, period. Not even the concept that nothing existed.
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Kwalish Kid
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Posted 01/08/05 - 06:36 AM:	#3
David Lewis, I believe, called it a fallacy to bias arguments in favour of non-existence (of everything) over existence (of anything). Quite simply, there could be no possible argument about why there should be something rather than nothing. That there is something is simply a fact of the matter. If there were nothing, there would be no fact of the matter.
"Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive nature of things." - KM, V, P and P "A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can't therefore argue that the net doesn't exist. Just ask the fish." - Jeffrey Kluger "â€¦Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people." -Ben Stein [This is included for the irony.]

Tobias
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Posted 01/08/05 - 10:15 AM:	#4
O dear o dear here we go again. There is a something nothing thread in which you find nearly all you need to kwow about nothing, here: http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/9794 A long read, but worth it. (And in length not nearly along as Frege Heidegger Hegel and Russel )
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Gassendi1
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Posted 01/08/05 - 11:17 AM:	#5
Tobias wrote: O dear o dear here we go again. There is a something nothing thread in which you find nearly all you need to kwow about nothing, here: http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/9794 A long read, but worth it. (And in length not nearly along as Frege Heidegger Hegel and Russel ) The best thing to read on Nothing is in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Here it is: http://www.nothing.com/Heath.html

Tobias
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Posted 01/08/05 - 12:45 PM:	#6
Strange as it may seem to you I also very much like that article...
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Bumpbert
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Posted 01/08/05 - 05:02 PM:	#7
Would it be incoherent to say that nothing and something might coexist? For instance, let's shave off all of Lewis' possible worlds except for one: the Nothing World. Could it be that there is Nothing, and then our everyday world? Is this a viable third alternative to "Something" and "Nothing?"
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Abner Desbrow
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Posted 01/09/05 - 12:52 AM:	#8
If there is nothing and something does not exist there is no point to the persuance either. It seems as if there is always a larger question about something and nothing. Why is there anything??

Gassendi1
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0 of 2 people found this post helpful Posted 01/09/05 - 07:43 AM:	#9
Abner Desbrow wrote: If there is nothing and something does not exist there is no point to the persuance either. It seems as if there is always a larger question about something and nothing. Why is there anything?? There is something in my bureau drawer, a pair of socks. And there is nothing in the drawer underneath it, for I have just emptied it. Since there is something in my bureau drawer, my socks, the answer to the question, is there anything is, yes. And, why is there anything in my bureau drawer? Well, because I put the pair of socks into it yesterday. I know that you think that none of this answers your question, and is even a joke. But you are mistaken about that.

Nomos
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Posted 01/09/05 - 08:03 AM:	#10
This has all been said before, as Tobias pointed out. But in brief, there is no answer to the something/nothing problem in Western philosophy. All question relating to it are 'metaphysical', by which is meant 'undecidable'. Great minds have pondered this issue for the early Greeks onwards ond got nowhere. Heidegger is good on it, relating the problem to the avoidance in Metaphysics of the issue of Being. In the non-dual view something is the same as nothing, or rather what is ultimate cannot be characterised as either something or nothing, so the problem doesn't arise. Here's a couple of quotes. "What about this nothing? The nothing is rejected precisely by science, given up as a nullity. But when we give up the nothing in such a way don’t we just concede it? Can we, however, speak of concession when we concede nothing? But perhaps our confused talk already degenerates into an empty squabble over words. Against it science must now reassert its seriousness and soberness of mind, insisting that it is concerned solely with beings. The nothing — what else can it be for science but an outrage and a phantasm? If science is right, then only one thing is sure: science wishes to know nothing of the nothing. Ultimately this is the scientifically rigorous conception of the nothing. We know it, the nothing, in that we wish to know nothing about it." Martin Heidegger ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ (1929) Text of inaugural lecture (8) - University of Freiburg Online "While the attempts to describe the materialisation of the universe from nothing remain highly speculative, they represent an exciting enlargement of the boundaries of science. If someday this program can be completed, it would mean that the existence and history of the universe could be explained by the underlying laws of nature. That is, the laws of physics would imply the existence of the universe. We would have accomplished the spectacular goal of understanding why there is something rather than nothing – because, if the approach is right, perpetual "nothing" is impossible. If the creation of the universe can be described as a quantum process, we would be left with one deep mystery of existence: What is it that determined the laws of physics? " Alan Guth ‘The Inflationary Universe’ (p 276) "All the same, we shall try to ask about the nothing. What is the nothing? Our very first approach to this question has something unusual about it. In our asking we posit the nothing in advance as something that "is" such and such; we posit it as a being. But that is exactly what it is distinguished from. Interrogating the nothing — asking what and how it, the nothing, is — turns what is interrogated into its opposite. The question deprives itself of its own object. Accordingly, every answer to this question is also impossible from the start. For it necessarily assumes the form: the nothing "is" this or that. With regard to the nothing question and answer alike are inherently absurd. But it is not science’s rejection that first of all teaches us this. The commonly cited ground rule of all thinking, the proposition that contradiction is to be avoided, universal "logic" itself, lays low this question. For thinking, which is always essentially thinking about something, must act in a way contrary to its own essence when it thinks of the nothing. Since it remains wholly impossible for us to make the nothing into an object have we not already come to the end of our inquiry into the nothing — assuming that in this question "logic" is of supreme importance, that the intellect is the means, and thought the way, to conceive the nothing originally and to decide about its possible exposure?" Martin Heidegger ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ (1929) Text of inaugural lecture (11/12) - University of Freiburg Online "Every concept formed by the intellect in an attempt to comprehend and circumscribe the divine nature can succeed only in fashioning an idol, not in making God known." Gregory of Nyssa ‘Life of Moses’ c. 390 Patrologia Graeca, Migne. In Oliver Clement ‘The Roots of Christian Mysticism’ New City, 1993 "Nothing is the same as fullness. In the endless state fullness is the same as emptiness. The Nothing is both empty and full. One may just as well state some other thing about the Nothing, namely that it is white or that it is black or that it exists or that it exists not. That which is endless and eternal has no qualities, because it has all qualities." C. G. Jung D. VII Sermones ad Moruos In S. A. Hoeller, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead Theosophical Publishing House, Illinois(1982) (pp 44-58)

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