Thoughts ? — Deus

Why is there something rather than nothing is the common starting point of much Christian apologetics. Because for such folk this leads straight to theism being necessary. The great first cause, unmoved mover arguments which goes back to Aristotle. Personally I don't think 'Why something from nothing?' is a coherent question. Human brains seem to be structured to conceptualize 'things' and 'no things' but how intelligible is this construct when you get to metaphysics? Has 'nothing' ever being identified; can it be identified, or are we talking about a theoretical nothing? What exactly is nothing supposed to be (no irony intended)? Are we conditioned to stick the word 'why' in front of things because our brains also seem to structure our reality in terms of cause and effect?

Has 'nothing' ever being identified; can it be identified, or are we talking about a theoretical nothing? — Tom Storm

It cannot be identified if it does not exist. A theoretical nothing can be defined. It would be the opposite of ‘something’. Having no qualities or characteristics such as time, mass, dimensions or other such characteristics that would define ‘something’. Essentially non-existence. Which would have continued to not exist infinitely…yet here we are there is something instead of nothing. And as something cannot arise out of nothing the essence and rules of ‘nothing’ would prohibit ‘something’ emerging from it. I then conclude that ‘something’ has always existed and has done so eternally.

Case closed ?

Following on from the above. That fact that something exists begs the question of where it came from or what created it. If it has always existed (eternally) then we either accept it as being what it is (a brute fact) or probe further. And probing further of course gets you more questions than answers. So I guess it still begs the question even though it’s paradoxical where did this eternal ‘something’ come from how did it come to be ? Confusing for sure … I guess we will never know … for now.

Having no qualities or characteristics such as time, mass, dimensions or other such characteristics that would define ‘something’. — Deus

Are there not philosophers (I think @joshs may be one) who argue that the universe has no intrinsic qualities or characteristics and it is us who find these and actively create what we know as reality? So perhaps something from nothing is the process which happens when humans have conscious experiences.

You cannot find an answer because, as you wrote in the title, it is metaphysics and, as such, it contains the same error that is common to all metaphysics: it ignores, or forgets, the involvement of the subject in the question. In other words, you introduced the question as it was something about objective things, ignoring that you are part of the question, you are inside the question that you wrote.

Yet here we are so I guess the question then leads to did something come from nothing ? — Deus

You just rightly rejected the idea that something could come from nothing. The existence of something already negates the possibility of a true nothing as that true nothing would have to lack the capacity for even the possibility or potentiality of producing a somethingness.

So next up on the batter's order is something from everything. The prior potential could be understood as a plenum, a state of absolute everythingness. And this works quite well as it is pretty quantum. In the quantum path integral or sum over histories, all possibilities exist, but then the majority must also contradict or self cancel. If a fluctuation can go right, it can also go left, and the upshot is the somethingness of a fluctuation that just didn't really get to happen at all.

Quantum field theory tells us reality actually works this way. A neutrino or quark are mixtures of all the particles they could be. The maths has to sum over all the possible states to get the most probable emergent state - the one that cancels away all the everythingness to arrive at some local somethingness, exact to 20 decimal places.

So we already can imagine using a quantum sum over histories to account for the Cosmos as simply what emerges when you average over all possible dimensional and particle arrangements to arrive at whatever final structure doesn't just self-cancel away its own potential to actually exist.

This approach to the Big Bang fits as its trajectory is then towards its own Heat Death. The Universe is also locked into a structure of expanding and cooling which will eventually achieve a state of as close to absolute nothingness as it can get - technically, a de Sitter void with a temperature of absolute zero and empty of particle content apart from the residual sizzle of Hawking radiation produced by the cosmic event horizon itself.

So everythingness must constrain itself via the interaction of all its own conflicting possibilities, which is how a residual somethingness is left. And we can see that the Big Bang cosmos is still manifesting this fate - this dissipative journey towards the nothingness of a void, exhausted of all its possibilities and so able to now exist in peace for all eternity.

But then "everythingness" as an initial conditions becomes something we can refine a little further. It carries connotations of an infinity of actuality - actual interactions, some actual place that was full of rather concrete possibilities. We want to get beyond even that to arrive at some more pure definition of a simple state of unbounded - not yet in anyway constrained - possibility.

That leads us to a logic of vagueness. A state of anything and everything is really just a state of absolute vagueness. The principle of non-contradiction doesn't even apply. It is literally less than nothing as it is beyond any concrete distinction, such as the negation of a nothing, or the affirmation of a something.

To sum up, the big question is the "why anything?" question. If you check ancient metaphysics, the "something out of everything" story is in fact pretty routine. The "something out of nothing" story arose with Greek atomism and its void, then got embedded in Christian theology in particular, with its need for an act of creation.

Modern science has arrived back at "something out of everything" as a mathematical theory. Quantum field theory can simulate the stormy interior of a proton as a suitably constrained potential, getting to the point where the sum over histories calculations shows surprisingly that the internal mass-creating fluctuations produce far more anti-down quarks than anti-up, to give a random example of how well supported this is.

But then, to really shift our thinking, we need to upgrade our metaphysical logic. Vagueness becomes a further category of "existence" that goes beyond the yin and yang of everything vs nothing.

Presence and absence are the crude or emergent categories which folk tend to want to apply to fundamental nature. But we can do better. Vagueness makes an even deeper claim that transcends the distinctions - the dichotomies - which it can thus engender.

To get back to the question, the short answer is that there is something because a state of everything includes its own negation, its own limitation. But not everything could then self-erase or cancel away its possibility of being actualised. Even the Heat Death of the cosmos - as an actualised state of maximal nothingness or void - is still going to be forever a residual something. The Universe will be like an infinitely large box produced so as to definitely and actually lose all the unbound possibilities that an absolute vagueness would have had to have contained.

A potential just wants to burst. And a vague potential has nothing to stop it bursting, but also no direction into which to burst. So the Big Bang is that logical impasse resolving itself in a sum over histories fashion. Spacetime organised as a direction, and matter-energy organised as the contents expressing the constraints of this spatiotemporal structure.

You had the hylomorphism of material impulse and formal order. A path arose to concretely turn a manifested everythingness into a matching "end of time" state of actualised nothingness. And overall this can be seen as a logical trajectory from a pure vagueness to a state of supreme counterfactual definiteness.

Physics and metaphysics come together, as they ought.

I logically concluded that "it simply is" here. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12098/a-first-cause-is-logically-necessary/p1

I have a follow up as well where I go into what that means for the universe. But its pretty simple. There is no reason why anything exists. It simply does. This is logically concluded, not simply an opinion. So what does that mean for us? Honestly, just enjoy it!

Well this is likely the ultimate metaphysical question, the biggest of them all. Many perspectives can be given.

The best I can do is, we are not equipped with the correct apparatus to clearly understand why something is less problematic than nothing - at least for nature.

So here we make the usual mistake of attributing issues that arise in the mind to nature, that are not a problem for nature.

... something from everything. The prior potential could be understood as a plenum, a state of absolute everythingness. — apokrisis

:fire:
e.g. Eternal vacua of fluctuating, virtual universes/clocks.

(Otherwise, there's "nothing" to prevent not-nothing from coming-to-be, continuing-to-be or ceasing-to-be.)

So here we make the usual mistake of attributing issues that arise in the mind to nature, that are not a problem for nature. — Manuel

So perhaps something from nothing is the process which happens when humans have conscious experiences. — Tom Storm

:clap: :up:

Re: 'The map is the territory fallacy' (of idealism).

e.g. Eternal vacua of fluctuating, virtual universes/clocks. — 180 Proof

Except the concept of a quantum vacuum is already predicated on a bounded, energy conserved and time symmetric, state. A gone to equilibrium backdrop which thus merely fluctuates. And probably with just three spatial dimensions - as that is the special condition where rotational degrees of freedom are symmetric with translational degrees of freedom. Etc.

So the prior potential has to be far more unstructured than any vacua. We are talking a quantum foam or some other pregeometric understandings of the initial conditions.

"Far more unstructured than any vacua" makes no sense to me.

My 2 denarii...

Ex nihilo nihil fit (nothing comes from nothing) and ergo, Creatio ex nihilo (something from nothing) is a bona fide miracle and a sine qua non for any miracle whatsoever is God!

Seems simple enough. A vacua is a space that is devoid of content. And thus it is already the existence of a structure - a metric or particle field.

To have a vacua is already to have the global symmetries that ensure the local invariances, or degrees of freedom. The breaking of symmetries can follow from the construction of the symmetry.

My point is that you then have to wind back your cosmic “clock” to whatever supposedly grounds this production of an actual vacua, this actual generalised state of symmetry.

pregeometric — apokrisis

Most interesting! — Ms. Marple

Which branch of math do you suppose is most apt for decoding the Big Bang (13.8 × 10⁹ suns ago)? We already tried calculus, arithmetic part & parcel of that, and as per reliable sources we're kinda stuck or have hit a wall. Should we turn to geometry/topology/knot theory/etc.? :grin: These are the only other subfields of math I've heard of.

The other question, to wit why is there nothing rather than something? is ~◇ to ask! To ask the question a conscious being, not just something, hasta exist but the question asserts that nothing exists! It would be what one person in another forum wished to discuss, a stupid question. Nevertheless, as per some brilliant folks, there's no such thing as a stupid question.

The ultimate question of metaphysics is, "What is the ultimate question of metaphysics?"

It all breaks down to computing the path integral of the symmetry of quantum foam, so that a vacuum results. :chin:

So here we make the usual mistake of attributing issues that arise in the mind to nature, that are not a problem for nature. — Manuel

:up:

Thinking about this the other day and finally the question that trumps all questions hit me. Why is there something rather than nothing ? — Deus

Well you’re not alone! :smile:

I recommend Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics for an analysis of this question. Fascinating, in my view.

it contains the same error that is common to all metaphysics: it ignores, or forgets, the involvement of the subject in the question. — Angelo Cannata

Just as this statement ignores the fact that the notion “subject” is equally silly.

I then conclude that ‘something’ has always existed and has done so eternally.

Case closed ? — Deus

Yes, for there is no "come from" for the Eternal.

One can go on to conclude that the temporaries produced by the Permanent Eternal have to be its rearrangements, such as the elementary 'particles' that are directly the quanta of fields.

Which branch of math do you suppose is most apt for decoding the Big Bang — Agent Smith

All physics likes to cash out in differential equations. And integration - as in path integrals - is just the reciprocal of differentiation. So in terms of the writing out of "laws", the language will look like the same old equations of motion approach.

Then physics strongly expects a final theory of the Big Bang to require an exact model of quantum gravity - the sought-for union of general relativity (GR) and quantum field theory (QFT). So those two bodies of maths would be melded into one capable of at least quantifying gravity, and possibly uniting gravity with the other three already quantified fundamental forces.

So the practical language of the maths is good old functions. And the justification of the unifying frame would be what employs the fancy-schmancy higher maths - stuff like permutation symmetries, topological order, and fibre bundles, and absolutely anything else that helped. Even category theory has been chucked into the fray.

Thus the target of producing a working theory of quantum gravity is a well-defined goal here. It would unite the three fundamental constants of c, G and h which found the differentiation of the "cosmological equations of state". QFT unites h and c. GR unites G and c. What is missing is QG that can unite h, c and G. Then we will be equipped to write out differential equations (and integrals) that contain all three required terms.

But as I say, the more metaphysical - or logic-based - arguments for how the cosmos works would be knitted together out of the usual symmetry/symmetry-breaking mathematical arguments. The conservation principles and least action principles that have been used since Newton, just with ever greater mathematical abstraction.

So for example knot theory tells you that knots only stay tied in three dimensions. And if you can make the argument that particles are really just "knots", then you can say why only a 3D reality could be the case. You don't have to write an ad hoc 3D constraint into your QG theory to make it work. You can say that any other number of dimensions would be a "trivial representation" - one that couldn't even hang together and thus exist.

So the big motivating ideas can come from all over the abstract end of maths. But then it will all be just "metaphysics" unless a framework can be cashed out in the usual concrete differential equations that let's scientists divide their labours into the usual thing of model building and acts of measurement.

That is simply the most practical way to reduce complexity to simplicity. Tell me exactly where something is now and I can calculate its position or action for all times, both prospectively and retrospectively. One number and one constant sums up "everything" about some physical interaction.

The ultimate question of metaphysics is, "What is the ultimate question of metaphysics?"

It all breaks down to computing the path integral of the symmetry of quantum foam, so that a vacuum results. — jgill

As I describe, I see these as two extremes of the one intellectual enterprise. We need to go abstract to get the big ideas, and then be able to do something - like compute the integral of a quantum foam - to prove that our theories measure up against the world they describe.

Gracias for answering my question. Most of your reply went over my head; nevertheless, I sense an agreement on your part that other branches of math, not just calculus, may lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the big bang and other phenomena like black holes, etc., stuff we're reportedly unable to parse as of the moment.

I sense an agreement on your part that other branches of math, not just calculus, may lead to breakthroughs — Agent Smith

I'm trying to stress that the idea of maths as a branching tree may be a misleading metaphor here. A tree makes it sound like calculus is the sturdy root and knot theory is some tiny obscure twig that might prove to break the dam of misunderstanding.

The difference is instead between the concrete and the abstract. So geometry is done with equations that have to include distances and angles. Topology is the more abstract view that can throw away such concrete measurables and simply envisage a structure of relations. The coffee mug you hold in your hand becomes instead the far more general thing of a torus.

Does that then make the coffee mug the sturdy root of your mathematical description, the torus a random distant branch of your mathematical tree?

You in fact need to go beyond tree metaphors to hierarchy theory - another "branch of maths" :grin: - to see how what is being opposed here is the particular vs the general, the concrete vs the abstract, the local vs the global, etc.

I'll need time to process that! Good day & gracias.

You just rightly rejected the idea that something could come from nothing — apokrisis

Doesn't the rest of the post suggest that nothing is everything? Especially when vagueness is brought up. There isn't a difference between a state of anything and everything that is really absolute vagueness and nothing.

There isn't a difference between a state of anything and everything that is really absolute vagueness and nothing. — Shed

My argument was meant to lead from the usual monistic framing of the existential question towards a triadic or systems view of the ontology - in the tradition of Anaximander, Aristotle, Hegel, Peirce, etc.

So we start with the undoubted fact that something exists. And we then seem to have to conclude either that this state of embodied somethingness existed forever - there was no creation event or process of evolutionary emergence - or that it arose out of ... nothingness ... for no clear reason ... and by no clear causal mechanism.

People feel these are the only obvious options. Either existence brutely exists in some eternal uncreated fashion, or somethingness can be dialectically opposed to nothingness and so if the cosmos sprang into being - especially in the way that Big Bang science suggests – then it had to pop out of a void, a nullity. The opposite kind of thing to a something which is a nothing.

But metaphysics can be more sophisticated than that. It can continue on to create more categories of existence.

So somethingness suggests nothingness as it rightful antithesis. However nothingness can be opposed to everythingness. And then the very idea of dichotomous categories – dyads like nothing vs everything - can be seen to themselves resolve into the crispness that is some such extremal division, and the vagueness which is the very "other" of any kind of extremal division at all.

Peirce, for example, developed this in terms of modern logic. He defined vagueness as the category of "existence" to which the principle of non-contradiction fails to apply. Normally, we argue that something has to be one thing or the other in some definite fashion. But this opens up the further option of being simply utterly indeterminate or vague. Nothing is being ruled out and the PNC fails to apply.

Peirce also defined the idea of generality (as opposed to particularity) as that to which the Law of the Excluded Middle fails to apply. Where vagueness is fundamentally indeterminate in regards to some distinction, generality is so inclusive it absorbs all possible distinction.

This shows how metaphysics has more tools in its cupboard than are conventionally employed in these discussions about "why anything?".

Anyway, what I argued towards was the evolutionary or developmental cosmology based on a triadic systems view of the Cosmos. In the "beginning" was a vagueness - an apeiron, an ungrund, a firstness - that was less than nothing in being utter indeterminacy. This vagueness could also be considered an everythingness in being a generality so general it again lacked all distinction.

But in lacking distinction, it could be the ground for the birth of distinctions. It could spawn dichotomies or dialectical oppositions such as "everything vs nothing". Suddenly, these two metaphysical categories could start to apply in some mutual or relative fashion. There could be nothing to the degree there wasn't everything, and there could everything to the degree there wasn't nothing. Somethingness then could arise with the two limits being set. There could be something because there was not everything and also not nothing.

So vagueness becomes some ultimate state of symmetry - a logical indefiniteness. The breaking of this symmetry by any kind of somethingness then brings with it the opposing extremal bounds of this nascent thingness. The slightest somethingness is already a pointer towards the two ultimate anchoring bounds of nothingness and everythingness - the two distant limits that show the somethingness to be what it is in terms of what it is not ... which is either a nothing or an everything.

Once you have got used to thinking about ontological questions using this kind of metaphysical logic, then you can bring a new resource to the current science of the Big Bang. You don't get hung up at the first step where you start arguing that something must have popped out of nothing ... which doesn't compute as nothing can come from nothing ... etc.

Why is there something rather than nothing ? — Deus

"Rather than"? Do you think there's something called "nothing" which would exist if there wasn't something?

Do you mean to ask "Why is there something?"

The slightest somethingness is already a pointer towards the two ultimate anchoring bounds of nothingness and everythingness - the two distant limits that show the somethingness to be what it is in terms of what it is not ... which is either a nothing or an everything — apokrisis

Profound or not? Something or nothing? :roll:

It all breaks down to computing the path integral of the symmetry of quantum foam, so that a vacuum results. :chin: — jgill

I appreciate you playing along with my bullshit. :smile:

Do you mean to ask "Why is there something?" — Ciceronianus

:smirk:

Very interesting post. Given your thoughts here , you might be interested in Lawvere's work on Hegel's dialectical using adjoint modalities if you haven't already heard of it.

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Hegel%27s+%22Logic%22+as+Modal+Type+Theory

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Aufhebung#lawveres_path_to_aufhebung

Intriguing. I looked into category theory years back but my approach is via hierarchy theory and Peircean semiotics which I just find far more physically natural and intuitive. So I would be happy if you might have further thoughts or references here.

But Lawvere’s adjoint cylinder example does get the essence of the triadic systems architecture in this kind of statement. And it even namechecks Peircean thirdness in doing so. Thus we are feeling the same elephant,

In other words, T unites, opposes and identifies L and R at the same time!