Why is there something rather than nothing?

We need an argument that demonstrates that nothing is impossible or that something is necessary, same thing!

It's quite a challenge to answer this question for the simple reason that one needs to have a deep understanding of nothing, but that's quite a difficult task if not impossible; after all how does one reason/experience (about) nothing?

The man who knows nothing well enough to answer this question hasn't been born.

I know that I know nothing — Socrates

:snicker:

We need an argument that demonstrates that nothing is impossible or that something is necessary, same thing! — Agent Smith

Well everythingness must contain its own limitations just because it includes all possible conflicts. A will be cancelled by not-A. The result ultimately would be that everythingness thus cannot “exist”. It can only be the prior potential which then self-cancels.

Then nothingness ought to actually exist as a consequence. And yet somethingness does exist at the moment. So we know also that everythingness must pass by a state of somethingness on its way to manifesting nothingness.

So somethingness must be just the stepping stone - the host of self-cancelling actions that the Cosmos must pass through to achieve its desired oblivion.

And science says the Big Bang is on its way to its Heat Death. Sound familiar? :chin:

Si, señor!

Everything can't exist (MAD - mutually assured destruction - of things and anti-things) and nothing would result. It is possible then, if everything exists, nothing would be the case. Is the something we experience just a phase in the transition from everything to nothing?

Nothing then is everything (they're synonomous from a yin-yang perspective, MAD).

That still doesn't answer the question though, does it? I dunno.

Is the something we experience just a phase in the transition from everything to nothing? — Agent Smith

That is the gist of the argument. And it fits the physics. The puzzle for cosmology is that the Big Bang didn’t just remain in its simplest possible state of a cooling-expanding radiation bath. Instead it went through a series of further symmetry breakings that led to complex matter.

But then, it will all return to that ultimate simplicity in the long run. All the particles will be swept up in blackholes and radiated away. The only material content left will be the dark energy stretching space until there is nothing around to actually have interactions.

So I offer a general logical argument. And it fits the physics.

The surprise is that the universe as we know it - full of material complexity - is a passing phase. Things had to get messier before they could eventually become simpler again. Not all self-cancellation could happen at once. The task is going to take time.

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

Danke kind person, danke!

It's impossible to know nothing.

Below, I offer an excerpt from a book on apples:

Apples are not rocks, they don't grow in tar. They're not found in the Arctic and they're not bitter [...]

If we can't know nothing (what it is rather than what it isn't), it's impossible to answer the question "why is there something rather than nothing?"

It's impossible to know nothing. — Agent Smith

Consider this ...

We need an argument that demonstrates that nothing is impossible or that something is necessary, same thing! — Agent Smith

I gave it a go in this old post

Is there any possible version of the actual world that is 'the negation of the actual world' (i.e. nothingness)?

Is there any possible world in which it is true that 'a possible world is not a possible world' (i.e. nothingness)? — 180 Proof

and then later on a different thread

Nothing-ness' entails even the absence of the possibility of not-nothingness (i.e. something). Thus: If ever nothingness, then never not-nothingness; something, therefore necessarily not-nothingness, no? — 180 Proof

Yeah, yeah: semantic, concept jugglery (aka 'Hegelian' metaphysics). :smirk:

Perhaps the right place to start is with thing, what is it? What's a thing? Then and only then should we move to an analysis of nothing.

A "thing" is not-nothingness – specifically, structured nothing.

:chin:

The world is the totality of facts, not of things. — TLP, prop. 1.1

Let's frame the question in terms of properties/qualities. A thing possesses at least one property. We can say of a thing that it is <insert quality>. Of nothing then for every predicate P, ~P_nothing.

We can't say of nothing that it is so and so. I believe nothing is the negation of everything and yet, as apokrisis said, nothing is everything.

Unfortunately, I can't offer a ton of clarification as I just discovered this myself looking for something totally different on nLab.

Some clarifying questions have been asked on Stack Exchange, and the answers are more accessible than the nLab articles. (E.g., https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/466638/what-was-the-lawveres-explanation-of-adjoint-functors-in-terms-of-hegelian-philo)

I am not particularly familiar with category theory so, while I get the Hegel references having read a good deal of Hegel and secondary sources, I get lost in the terminology pretty quickly here and have to keep looking stuff up. My math background is very much focused on applied mathematics. I've had a lot of experience with all sorts of regression techniques used in economics and polsci, game theory, a good deal of simulation work from my time working in intelligence, and a bunch of hybrid programming/stats skills I've developed since joining a startup that is trying to automate some of the work finance/management analysts do in local government/school districts. None of this is very abstract, so for a lot of topics in mathematics (e.g., set theory) I only have a hobbiest level understanding.

It's a shame these areas are not taught in the context of many fields though because I can see how they apply to a lot of work I do programming. For example, setting up a DAX measure to use as categories for a budget to actuals graphs is essentially using a lot of logical arguments to define a set. But I do it without formalism and sloppily in iterations until it works, and it doesn't even produce true definitions because no client's use their chart of accounts correctly.

More abstract mathematics, logic, and coding have a lot in common. I wish there was more cross pollination there.

Perhaps the right place to start is with thing, what is it? What's a thing? Then and only then should we move to an analysis of nothing. — Agent Smith

Indeed.

Instead of thing, I suggest using “being.”

Then there’s a question about beings (things, individuated entities) and being (thing-ness).

When we think about beings we tend to do so in terms of what is before us in experience— what is present in the world or in our minds — concepts, classes, words, numbers, shapes, colors, individual things, material objects, etc.

It almost can’t be helped; in the same way it’s much more likely that we reflect upon our environment and not what’s happening in China or on Mars.

The same is true of our bodies. The process of my kidneys aren’t before me in experience. It’s a kind of absence. Ditto with habits and automaticity— so much of our lives goes simply unnoticed. Taken for granted.

Is absence a kind of “nothing”, then? In the sense that it’s not present before us, in the background, invisible, withdrawing — then it’s very much like nothing. It’s not a thing in the sense we normally mean “thing” or “being” as that which is known, present, and “there.”

Instead of thing, I suggest using “being.” — Xtrix

Any reasons why?

4 sets for analysis:

1. { }. No elements.
2. {{ }}. The { } is the only element.
3. {0}. 0 is the only element.
4. {{ }, 0}. This set is a valid set.

Where do you fit the set of all infinitesimals in your scheme here?

Well everythingness must contain its own limitations just because it includes all possible conflicts. A will be cancelled by not-A. The result ultimately would be that everythingness thus cannot “exist”. It can only be the prior potential which then self-cancels. — apokrisis

What do you mean by A and not-A? If A is an object and not-A are all objects other than A, I don't see necessarily any contradiction in the simultaneous existence of all these objects, or their mutual "cancellation".

Why is there something rather than nothing ? — Deus

What does it mean for something to "exist"? How does "being logically possible (consistent)" differ from "existing"? I don't know what the difference could be, so it seems to me that there is no difference and therefore all logically possible objects necessarily exist, by definition. In other words, every object that is identical to itself (every object that is what it is and is not what it is not) necessarily exists.

What remains to be found is what objects are identical to themselves.

What do you mean by A and not-A? — litewave

I’m talking in the context of quantum field theory and its path integral formalism, particle fields and creation-annihilation operators. Or in very simple terms, if there is a fluctuation - anything at all - then it is just as likely to go left as go right. And doing both, it cancels out doing anything at all.

So when describing a quantum vacuum ground state, any fluctuation has some probability. But these virtual particles are created in mutually cancelling pairs. An electron must generally be accompanied by a positron. And so while they both may briefly exist, they both also just as fast wipe each other out.

It is just built into the quantum view that everything is possible, and yet generally it all self cancels to nothing because the only way to exist as some particular object is to break a symmetry. And yet that very symmetry - if I can go left, then I can also go right - then comes back at you to swallow you up.

This gives you your quantum ground state - an everythingness that is a nothingness. From there, you can start to figure out how anything concrete could persist for any kind of time at all.

And that becomes what cosmology is all about - the messy complexity that saw one in a billion protons failing to be annihilated by a matching antiproton in the first split second of the Big Bang, and so create a universe as something more interesting than a spread-cooling bath of radiation.

Where do you fit the set of all infinitesimals in your scheme here? — apokrisis

Zeroish stuff you mean. Smaller than the smallest imaginable positive real but not zero is how I define infinitesimals. Would a mathematician forgive me for thinking of infinitesimals this way?

No one ever agrees with this argument, so I'll just put it here in case anyone's interested. If not, just ignore it. Thanks.

I think that to ever get a satisfying answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", we're going to have to address the possibility that there could have been "nothing", but now there is "something".   If any extant solution were satisfying, we wouldn't still be asking the question.  Another way to say that you start with "nothing" is with the analogy where you start with a 0 (e.g., "nothing") and end up with a 1 (e.g., "something").  We know you can't change a 0 into a 1 (ex nihilo nihil fit), so you can't start with a 0 unless somehow the 0 isn't really a 0 but is actually a 1 in disguise, even though it looks like 0 on the surface.  That is, in one way of thinking "nothing" just looks like "nothing".  But, if we think about "nothing" in a different way, we can see through its disguise and see that it's a "something".  That is the situation we previously, and incorrectly, thought of as "nothing" is actually an existent entity, or a "something".  A proposed mechanism for how that can be is as follows.

I think that to ever get a satisfying answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", we're going to have to address the possibility that there could have been "nothing", but now there is "something".   If any existing solution were satisfying, we wouldn't still be asking the question.  Another way to say that you start with "nothing" is by using the analogy that you start with a 0 (e.g., "nothing") and end up with a 1 (e.g., "something").  We know you can't change a 0 into a 1 (ex nihilo nihil fit), so the only way to do this is if that 0 isn't really a 0 but is actually a 1 in disguise, even though it looks like 0 on the surface.  That is, in one way of thinking, "nothing" just looks like "nothing".  But, if we think about "nothing" in a different way, we can see through its disguise and see that it's a "something".  That is the situation we previously, and incorrectly, thought of as "nothing" is actually an existent entity, or a "something".  So, “something" doesn't come out of "nothing". Instead, the situation we used to think of as "nothing" is actually a "something" if we could see through its disguise. A proposed mechanism for how that can be is as follows.

    How can "nothing" be a "something"?  I think it's first important to try and figure out why any “normal” thing (like a book, or a set) can exist and be a “something”. I propose that a thing exists if it is a grouping.  A grouping ties stuff together into a unit whole and, in so doing, defines what is contained within that new unit whole.  This grouping together of what is contained within provides a surface, or boundary, that defines what is contained within, that we can see and touch as the surface of the thing and that gives "substance" and existence to the thing as a new unit whole that's a different existent entity than any components contained within considered individually.  This surface or boundary doesn't have some magical power to give existence to stuff. But, it is is the visual and physical manifestation of the grouping together of stuff into a new unit whole or existent entity.  Some examples of groupings are 1.) the grouping together of paper and ink atoms to create a new unit whole called a book that's a different existent entity than the atoms considered individually; 2.) the grouping together of previously unrelated elements to create a set; and 3.) even the mental construct labeled the concept of a car is a grouping together of the concepts tires, chassis, steering wheel, use for transportation, etc.  Here, the grouping is better thought of as the top-level label "car" that the mind uses to group subheadings together into one.

    Next, when you get rid of all matter, energy, space/volume, time, abstract concepts, laws or constructs of physics/math/logic, possible worlds/possibilities, properties, consciousness, and finally minds, including the mind of the person trying to imagine this supposed lack of all, we think that this is the lack of all existent entities, or "absolute nothing" But, once everything is gone and the mind is gone, this situation, this "absolute nothing", would, by its very nature, define the situation completely. This "nothing" would be it; it would be the all. It would be the entirety, or whole amount, of all that is present. Is there anything else besides that "absolute nothing"? No. It is "nothing", and it is the all. An entirety/defined completely/whole amount/"the all" is a grouping, which means that the situation we previously considered to be "absolute nothing" is itself an existent entity. It's only once all things, including all minds, are gone does “nothing” become "the all" and a new unit whole that we can then, after the fact, see from the outside as a whole unit. One might object and say that being a grouping is a property so how can it be there in "nothing"? The answer is that the property of being a grouping (e.g., the all grouping) only appears after all else, including all properties and the mind of the person trying to imagine this, is gone. In other words, the very lack of all existent entities is itself what allows this new property of being the all grouping to appear.

Some other points are:

1. It's very important to distinguish between the mind's conception of "nothing" and "nothing" itself, in which no minds would be there. These are two different things. Humans are stuck having to define "nothing" in our existent minds (i.e., "somethings"), but "nothing" itself doesn't have this constraint.  Whether or not "nothing" itself exists is independent of how we define it or talk about it.
This is also why just talking about "nothing" does not reify it.  Our talking about "nothing" has no impact on whether or not "nothing" itself exists.

2. The words "was" (i.e., "was nothing") and "then"/"now" (i.e., "then something") in the first paragraph imply a temporal change, but time would not exist until there was "something", so I don't use these words in a time sense. Instead, I suggest that the two different words, “nothing” and “something”, describe the same situation (e.g., "the lack of all"), and that the human mind can view the switching between the two different words, or ways of visualizing "the lack of all", as a temporal change from "was" to "now".

3. While no one can directly visualize "nothing" because the mind is not present in "nothing", what we can do is to try to visualize the entire volume of the universe/reality shrinking down to just the size of our mind's eye and then trying to extrapolate what it would be like if the mind weren't there.  That's as far as we can get.

If anyone's interested, more details are at:
https://philpapers.org/rec/GRAPST-4
or
https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/

Philosophical musings:

Nothingness (Roy Sorensen; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; updated Feb 28, 2022)

Physicist musings:

The Four Different Meanings Of 'Nothing' To A Scientist (Ethan Siegel; Forbes; May 1, 2020)

• a condition where the raw ingredients to create your "something" didn't exist
• nothingness is the void of empty space
• nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime
• nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire universe and the laws that govern it

From some we might expect "nothingness" to express (exhaustive) absence of everything/anything, i.e. by negation, like the missing complement to existence. Oddly enough, this also implies absence of constraints, conservation (physics), prevention, etc. Not much to speak of it seems. A referent-free word? If there was another reason for it all, for existence, then that reason wouldn't exist, since existence/all is inclusive (by definition). There's something suspect about this inquiry.

Colloquially we might say something like "there's nothing in the fridge", meaning the fridge is empty, ready to be filled (with beer). Rather different from the other uses.

But, amazingly, it's all somehow around. :)

It strikes me that the question, as stated, should never arise. Why assume that "something" requires an explanation because it exists rather than or instead of nothing?

One might reasonably inquire why X exists, i.e. seek an explanation of its existence. This is something we do all the time. We arrive at an answer, or we don't. But it seems that this question, with its assumption of an alternative to something called "nothing", doesn't really seek an explanation, but instead searches for a purpose.

It strikes me that the question, as stated, should never arise. Why assume that "something" requires an explanation because it exists rather than or instead of nothing? — Ciceronianus

:100:

It strikes me that the question, as stated, should never arise. Why assume that "something" requires an explanation because it exists rather than or instead of nothing? — Ciceronianus

But doesn’t finding that things only persist rather than exist make it harder to take such an a-causal stance on the matter?

Reality seems more a process - a developing structure - than just some eternal set of material objects.

So existence might seem a brute fact, but persistence requires it contextual explanation.



Thanks. I checked over my old notes and was reminded that Fernando Zalamea did these analyses of how CT connects to Peirce (more than Hegel).

https://cesfia.org.pe/villena/zalamea_peirce_translation.pdf
https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Zalamea-Peirces-Continuum.pdf

Reality seems more a process - a developing structure - than just some eternal set of material objects.

So existence might seem a brute fact, but persistence requires it contextual explanation. — apokrisis

Accepting this, I still don't understand what assuming "nothing", whatever that is meant to mean, as--seemingly--an alternative to existence or persistence, does beyond supporting a belief that something in the nature of a super-explanation, which doesn't merely explain why a phenomenon or event exists or take place, which may be resolved by scientific inquiry or even common sense, is required to account for the universe and every part of it. There must be a super-explanation, or reason or purpose, for everything, because otherwise (instead) there would be nothing.

Accepting this, I still don't understand what assuming "nothing", whatever that is meant to mean, as--seemingly--an alternative to existence or persistence, does beyond supporting a belief that something in the nature of a super-explanation... — Ciceronianus

What is wrong with a super-explanation here? The "why anything" question seems perfectly reasonable to me – once you get beyond the beginner level of "something rather than nothing" as the two ontic categories you feel are being opposed.

There must be a super-explanation, or reason or purpose, for everything, because otherwise (instead) there would be nothing. — Ciceronianus

We have two traditions of super-explanation being opposed here.

Atomism or reductionism is based on the assumption of brute material existence in eternal voids. You seem to be speaking for that. Things just are forever. There is no reason or purpose to be found. In terms of what is real, the mantra is that form and finality are categories which fail to exist in nature.

But then you have holism or the process view. Existence is evolutionary and thus form and purpose are real. Somethingness is the "reasonable" constraint on chaotic everythingness. An overarching principle organises creation - even if it is just the Darwinian imperative to persist as a structure of entropy dissipation.

Atomism requires either transcendence or mutism from its adherents. Either they must find their answer to "why anything" in a creating god, or they must stifle the "why" question itself.

Holism seeks its answer in self-organising immanence. Concrete existence arises because absolute freedom imposes its own organising constraints. Existence is thus a persistent statistical pattern. The emergent sum over all possibilities.

That is where our physical inquiry has led to. It is the metaphysics of quantum field theory. So why not just accept it?

We may be able to theorize that "existence is evolutionary"; we may be able to ascertain a tendency toward organization. I have problems thinking of that as explaining why there is something rather than nothing, however. Does the universe exist in order to evolve, or does the evolution take place because it exists? The super-explanation I was thinking of, which I think is the goal of the question necessitated by the form of the question (why something instead of nothing) would be an explanation along the lines of "there's something because the universe was created for a reason." In other words, the question presumes a transcendent cause with an end in view--not a something which always is instead of nothing.

I personally sypmpathize with the view that any deity or divinity is immanent rather than transcendent, along the lines of what the ancient Stoics thought. They thought the universe organized and guided by a Divine Reason represented by fire, itself a part of the universe. I don't know if we can determine a purpose or reason, because of which there must be something, but we may be able to determine a tendency or process, and speculate from there.

but we may be able to determine a tendency or process, and speculate from there. — Ciceronianus

Increasing entropy, I suppose.