However, in the presumed absence of God, finding a compelling reason for anything to exist is problematical, because science generally rejects questions of teleology or purpose, and this is the teleological question par excellence. — Wayfarer

In my humble opinion, assuming god created the universe, there are two steps in the creation process viz.

1) Telos, what purpose does the universe serve (for god, for us)?

and

2) What methods were employed in the act of creation (how?)?

A scientific approach to the fundamental question of metaphysics has to do with step 2) What methods were employed in the act of creation (how?)? This, invariably, requires us to figure out the principles/laws of matter and energy that go into creation of a universe. God did something alright [he brought this universe into existence]. There must be a way faer did it.

It's clear that keeping the option of a god open, the fundamental question of metaphysics will need to be answered in two stages:

1. A teleological answer that involves god: There's something [the universe exists] because the universe has a purpose given it by god.

2. Mechanistic answer that may or may not involve god: There's something [the universe exists] because of <insert some scientific law/principle that causes the universe to come into existence e.g. Lawrence Krauss' quantum field fluctuations>.

As you can see, whether or not god exists and whether or not fae had a hand in creating the universe, the mechanistic answer is a permanent fixture of any answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics.

You are right that there are far more configurations of things than of nothing, making something more likely over time — Kenosha Kid

anthropic principle — Kenosha Kid

You say it better than me!

Thanks for putting a mathematical spin to it.

I was wondering about what I initially thought was a problem for my answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics:

Assuming that the only possible configurations of something are: {A, 7, and (A, 7)} each of these being something, only one of these configurations could be conducive to life but then that means:

P(nothing) = 1/4 and P(something with life) = 1/4 which still leaves us with having to explain why something rather than nothing. It finally dawned on me that this isn't necessarily the case. Life could exist in configuration A or 7 or (A, 7) or all of them even if only in vastly different forms. Anyway, what I want to say is, the anthropic principle is relevant in this regard.

Do you have any idea about the physical constants of the universe as it relates to the anthropic principle? I remember downloading a book titled "Just Six Numbers" about how the universe wouldn't have evolved in the way it did to permit life if the values of one or more of six physical constants in the universe had been different. I haven't gotten round to reading it though. I will...someday.

By the way, assuming my argument to be true, can you mathematize it better?

I'll give you a rough sketch of how I approached the question of why there is something rather than nothing:

1. Possibilities: Nothing or Something

2. There's only 1 kind of nothing

But

3. There are many kinds of something. It makes sense if we look at it mathematically. 1 thing is something, 2 things are something,...n things are something,...ad infinitum. Each one of these somethings would need to be considered independently. Why? All I can do here is offer an analogy. If a bag contained 1 black ball and 3 white balls, a total of 4 balls, the probability of picking a white ball = 3/4. Each 1 of the 3 white balls is treated as probabilistically independent i.e. each white ball, by itself, matters. Too, lumping all of these possible somethings together would be everything and that's not what the fundamental question of metaphysics is asking. The question is not why is there everything and not nothing? but rather why is there something rather than nothing?

By the way, I propose another fundamental question of metaphysics viz. why is there something rather than everything?

4. Ergo, given that nothing is just 1 possibility, the probability of something if something consists of 1 thing or 2 things or 3 things...n things = n/(1+n). Remembering that something is at least ONE, n can extend to infinity. What happens to n/(1+n) as n approaches infinity? It approaches 1 or 100%. That means the probability of something existing rather than nothing is 100% and that's just another way of saying something is certain (100%) to exist. :chin:

Is it possible to be overly rational in chess? — Hrvoje

What kind of answer are you looking for? A rational one as far as I can tell but that is a point against what seems to be your thesis - that we're overly rational [on occasion I suppose]. I sense a contradiction in your approach - you don't trust rationality but you wish for rationality to prove that rationality can't be trusted. Nice paradox!

Everything encompasses something. — Harry Hindu

Yes, I get that but there's a difference between everything and something and that difference is important when we consider the relationship of these two concepts with nothing.

Not everything isn't nothing, it's something. However not something is nothing.

Everything entails something. — Harry Hindu

There's a difference between everything and something and this becomes clear when we realize that something doesn't entail everything.

It's becoming less ethical to do so ... — 180 Proof

:clap: :up: :smile:

What's the opposite of nothing? Is it everything or something?

Looks like both are saying the same thing. — Harry Hindu

No, they're not saying the same thing.

1.. Nothing can exist can be interpreted in two ways:

1a. It's impossible for things to exist

1b. Nothing, itself, can exist

1a. is about the nonexistence of things and 1b. is about the existence of nothing. Entirely different issues.

Not sure I'm really understanding your question. The absence of one thing doesn't mean nothing. It means something else. In other words, when you imagine something not existing, you don't imagine nothing existing, you imagine something else in its place (space and air, or maybe a bachelor if you were imagining a married man). — Harry Hindu

This is another aspect of this metaphysical puzzle. What is the opposite of nothing? Is it something or everything? If something exists then definitely not the case that nothing, no? If you disagree then you'd be saying that something AND nothing is possible and the burden of proof rests on your hairy Hindu shoulders I'm afraid :smile:

If everything exists and I remove one or more but not all things, it's no longer everything but something, right? Ergo, the opposite of everything isn't nothing but something. In other words, it's possible that not the case that everything AND still not the case that nothing i.e. not everything AND not nothing is possible. That means nothing isn't the opposite of everything.

Ergo, the opposite of nothing is something and not everything. Remember that something is defined as at least one thing and so the opposite of something isn't something else like you seem to be thinking ["The absence of one thing doesn't mean nothing. It means something else."] but nothing.

Just think of it. Something means that there should be at least ONE thing. Anything less than ONE thing is not something and anything less than ONE is ZERO and that's nothing.

Because its impossible — Harry Hindu

Why is it impossible?

You misread me. I did not state or imply "Why is there everything ...?" — 180 Proof

:up:

E.g. there are countless ways for 'something' to be and yet only one way for 'everything' to never have been (i.e. not to be). — 180 Proof

A fine observation on your part. However, you seem to have missed an important detail - that what's being asked isn't "why is there everything rather than nothing?" but "why is there something rather than nothing?" There's a difference between everything and something, right? Too, everything doesn't exist! Where are the unicorns? Where's the talking lion from Narnia? Where's the spaceship Enterprise from Star Trek? I could go on but I think you get the picture.

Considering that the animals only exist because of the demand, I don't think taking their existence away to satisfy the demand is unethical. The pain and suffering that comes with it is. — Down The Rabbit Hole

A couple of things:

1. Pain and suffering are the harbingers of death. Their sole purpose is to warn living things when death is on the horizon. You can't separate the two - death and pain/suffering - in a way that wouldn't raise a few eyebrows here and there. That would be like a gang of thieves deciding to sabotage the the burglar alarm first and then robbing a house, fully convinced that doing the former makes their action legal (read: moral)

2. Pain/suffering, in the "able" hands of humans, have morphed into something entirely different - goes by the name torture. We're so god-damned ingenious that we've manged to turn a friend (protective pain) into an enemy (torture pain) [This is a side note. You may ignore it if you wish]

Wilder Penfield's Myster of the MInd — Wayfarer

Thanks for the recommendation. :up:

What bothers me is that causation usually doesn't have latency periods or if they do have them, the time involved is in the milliseconds or even nanoseconds. By latency period I mean the time-gap between cause and effect. It seems rather unusual for a latency period to extend into the minutes, days, weeks, months, even years and these are actual time spans involved between making a choice and acting on that choice.

Although I'm leaning towards nihilism because skepticism, even the most radical ones, resonates with me, I have this suspicion that nihilism, in certain respects, makes the mistake of looking for objectivity and rationality in areas that are, by their very nature, subjective and arbitrary. For instance "...human principles and social institutions..." bears the mark of our tastes rather than reason and that's perfectly fine by me. To seek objectivity/rationality in what's fundamentally neither is being a bit too unreasonable.

According to Richard Dawkins - evolutionary biologist, atheist, writer, science communicator - the whole notion of nature in harmony which your post presupposes is an illusion. He describes the situation we're in and I mean all life by "we" as one of "selfish cooperation" and I have my doubts whether he intended his words to be taken seriously. The tone of his writing suggested an attempt at ironic humor.

I still don't get it. What do you mean by opposites if not in a yin-yang sense?

We don't see eye to eye regarding your concept of infinite potential as pertains to nothing. For me, the infinite potential of nothing would, of its own accord, bring something into existence. There would be no need for "...some kind of Mind" to actualize the potential. What's the point of having infinite potential if it needs something else to get things moving? In fact the infinity in infinite potential is reminiscent of the divine and I expected you to grab that opportunity to introduce god into your theory. It turns out, I was wrong. :sad:

To delay acting on one's choice is a form of control, no?

I do not wish to go down an Alice in Wonderland philosophy path — Jack Cummins

You said you're interested in "...science fiction and fantasy writing" Anyway, have a good day. I'll call it a day.

Is purchasing factory farmed KILLED animal products ethical — Down The Rabbit Hole

Is killing ethical?

Is being part of the constant demand for meat that ultimately involves killing of animals ethical?

Begging the question

I'm in unfamiliar territory but does the type-token distinction seem relevant to the OP? Speaking in terms of the geometrical object triangle, there's a type triangle and all other triangles are its tokens. Quine's notion of Plato's beard seems to ignore/overlook this.

The main thing is that yin and yang denote polarity mainly. The Yin Yang I create is the one of excess and deficit, being and nothingness, mind and anti-mind, rationality and anti-rationality. — Thinking

What do you mean by "polarity"? Yin and yang are basically opposites and covers your "...excess and deficit, being and nothingness, mind and anti-mind, rationality and anti-rationality"? These are, to my knowledge, polarities too.

Well, the way I see it, we need to frame our two powerful abilities - memory and imagination - in a temporal context. Memory accesses the past and imagination "accesses" the future; what we've learned is in our memory and this knowledge, relevant aspects of it, is applied in the present after a desired future state has been imagined. Our imagination thus can generate multiple alternative realities and although, as I'm inclined to believe, this may largely be about planning a desired future state, it also gives us the ability to create wholly new mindscapes or fantasy worlds populated by Alice in Wonderland type of characters. with their own set of rules that can be and, in my case, have been, radically different from what we know as reality.

By keeping a curious mind, an honest heart, an ear to other opinions, and a rational viewpoint. — Philosophim

:up: Not to detract from the excellent recommendations you make here - they both make sense and are not beyond reach of mere mortals like us - but that's precisely why they seem so not true; after all, given their simplicity (???), many people should be virtuoso practitioners of the methods you described and yet there's no one whom we may justifiably attribute wisdom to. Is it because these traits of a wise person you listed are not as easy to cultivate as we suppose they are? Or is it something else... :chin:?

"What is the answer to all possible questions?" There ya go. You answer that, there is no need for any other question. — Philosophim

:up:

Another angle to the issue of wisdom, given that we define it as both good and true, how do we attain it?

My question is, if quantum immortality is true and given approximately 107 billion people have lived on earth, there should be at least one or two who are immortal, alive and well somewhere in the world. Records don't show the existence of such individuals. What gives?

107 billion people
There are currently seven billion people alive today and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that about 107 billion people have ever lived. This means that we are nowhere near close to having more alive than dead. — Google

What is the probability that a person will achieve quantum immortality in the universe we exist in? :chin:

The reason I refrain from yin and yang is because there is a few inaccurate preconceived notions of what those mean for many — Thinking

What are they?

fantasy — Jack Cummins

:up:

That's a fine piece of philosophical analysis by my standards. You drew a distinction between inner and outer lives and I should've immediately caught on regarding what you meant but I didn't. The inner life and outer life should be like NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) - there should be nothing or little in common between the two and fantasy and imagination seem to be the right place to start in order to make this distinction of inner and outer lives. After all, our fantasies, our inner lives, usually don't correspond to anything in our outer lives. The two are distinct in this sense. I suppose all of us do create and live part of our existence in fantasy worlds where we have total freedom to do whatever we want. The outer life isn't like that - we have to restrain ourselves, control our impulses, conform to standards, and the like.

Reminds me of solipsism, computer simulation, even god. We play every character, the environment and setting down to every last detail is entirely our choice and we have the power to create and destroy at will in worlds we fantasize about. Such freedom is unavailable in our outer lives.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by inner and outer lives but it seems like you're drawing a distinction between study of our minds (inner) and study of the world to the exclusion of the mind (outer). On this view, psychology, logic, spiritualism, religion count as inner life and science, materialism, engineering, to name a few constitute the outer life.

If this is the correct interpretation of the concepts of inner and outer lives, what might be of interest to you, what's amazing, is that the outer life, to me, seems to be an inner life affair. We turn our gaze outward only to the extent that it aids us in discovering who we, ourselves, are i.e. we want to, let's just say, enrich and enhance our inner life when we engage with our outer life.

It assumes nothing can exist, or that something can come from nothing, but we know that to be wrong — Harry Hindu

1. Nothing can exist can be interpreted in two ways:

1a. It's impossible for things to exist

1b. Nothing, itself, can exist

The fundamental question of metaphysics is about interpretation 1a. it's impossible for things to exist, it's falsity specifically which is "it's possible for things to exist". Why?

2. How do you know that "something can come from nothing" is wrong?

Thats a different question that your formula doesn't address. It also seems like a useless non-sensical question. How useful do you expect the answer to be? — Harry Hindu

There's no formula in my post. Why is it "...a useless nonsensical question"?

We do have the answer. Something exists. Therfore, this whole endeavor is unnecessary. — Harry Hindu

Buy why does something exist?

But, there’s always a but, would morality come from wisdom or wisdom from morality? — Brett

wisdom is defined as both the true AND good. — TheMadFool

It's tautologous because any statement relies on the fact that the universe exists. It goes without saying. — Wayfarer

I don't agree with you completely on this. The fundamental question of metaphysics asks, "why does the universe exist?" and implicit in that question - you could label it a complex question - is that the universe exists. To assert "the universe exists" is just acknowledging that implicit and true assertion. Yes, it's as tautology but as you said, it would be "...preposterous to say it doesn't"

My argument is simple. If thoughts are like radio waves permeating space as thought waves, and our brains are simply receivers for these thought waves, we can't claim to be thinking, right? Our brains would be merely playing the contents of the thought waves just like radio playing the contents of the station its tuned in to.

Well?

And if light waves are real you cannot be seeing, so the things I see are not mine and somehow not seen by me. :chin: You are deeply confused. — Tobias

You can see of course but you can't be the light waves. Thoughts, in the scenario I described, are thought waves and you can't be thought waves.

Well, if you ask me, your question, "[what is the] perfect question?" is itself a strong contender to the title of the perfect question.

If you'd like another opinion, I'd say the perfect question is, "how do we gain wisdom?" given that wisdom is defined as both the true AND good.

You know, I think this is incorrect. Things exist. All kinds of them - big list. But 'the universe' is the background against which the notion of 'existence' is defined. It is tautologous to say that it exists, and preposterous to say it doesn't. And that means something. — Wayfarer

What do you mean by "it is tautologous..."?

Does that mean that those people became simpletons? I'm confused. — jgill

I wasn't clear enough. My bad. The simplicity (of the task) of mental hygiene lies in its obviousness once one engages in philosophy and someone kind enough informs you of it (@180 Proof) but the actual processes involved ain't so easy. Thus don't be fooled by the word "simplicity". As they say and is the case this might just be an instance of hindsight being 20/20.

@180 Proof I wanted to cite you on mental hygiene but I thought you wouldn't care if I did or didn't. :up:

In my creation story, BEING is simply No-thing, except infinite Potential. Hence, nothing is Actual — Gnomon

I want to explore this idea of nothing as infinite potential a little more. Infinite potential can be taken to exert a "existential pressure" of equivalent magnitude and by "existential pressure" I mean that which makes the possible/potential actual/real. So, nothing as infinite potential exerts infinite "existential pressure" and something, perforce, comes into being - the real/actual pop out of this field of infinitie potential/possibility. Nothing then can't exist for the infinite potential in it exerts an infinite "existential pressure" that makes things (something) come into existence. There, you have your creation story based on nothing as infinite potential. No god though unless, of course, you call the infinite, in infinite potential, god. Nothing as infinite potential as infinite possibilities is reminiscent of omnipotence?

my room is the one known to be haunted! — Hanover

:scream:

through my philosophy it is always a unification of the two that gives us truth — Thinking

Golden mean fallacy! However I'm all excited about where you're going with this.

Whatever the energy "God" was then (I have many reasons to believe it is thought) was the one that had unified these opposite extremes to create the universe. — Thinking

Zoroastrianism? Angra Mainyu (destructive) vs Spenta Mainyu (creative)

Taoism? Yin (female) vs Yang (male)

However, according to @apokrisis or @m-theoryrules the universe is a broken symmetry i.e. there's an imbalance, one of the two opposing forces has the upperhand.

Yet, there's also the fact that the total energy in the universe is ZERO suggesting a perfect balance between yin and yang.

"The universe can be conceived of as having emerged from the possibility space"
Where does the "possibility space" come from?
Possibilities exist in minds. — Roger

P = The universe exists.

My modal logic ain't that good but I think the following statement is true.

1. If P then ◇P

What this means is that for the universe to exist it should've been possible for it to exist and possibility space is simply that condition.

:up: Will check that link (later).

Damn! Knew I should have placed that bet when there was Nothing. — Wayfarer

:lol:

That's an unfounded assumption. How did you come to the certain conclusion that something existing and nothing existing are equiprobable outcomes? — Harry Hindu

As I said in my OP, the question, "why is there something rather than nothing?" assumes that the probability of something P(S) = probability of nothing P(N)= 50% because if that weren't the case, we would either have the answer to the question or would be claiming knowledge we don't possess.

1.If P(S) > P(N) then we have the answer: The explanation for why there's something rather than nothing is something is more probable.

2. If P(S) < P(N) then we're claiming knowledge we don't possess. It would mean we know that nothing is more probable than something but we don't know that.

The only option left is P(S) = P(N) = 50%