(because)The old-agemetaphysicalquestion: Why is there anything at all? — Wheatley
Stupid questions like this can't be asked unless there are fools to ask or answer them — 180 Proof
It's a "with humor" response, as per the OP. Taken literally misses the joke. — 180 Proof
The old-age metaphysical question: Why is there anything at all? — Wheatley(because)
• Stupid questions like this can't be asked unless there are fools to ask or answer them. (o___0)
• There is nothing to stop "anything at all" from coming-to-be, etc. ~Atomism (metaphysics)
• "Nothing is unstable." ~F. Wilczek, et al (physics) — 180 Proof
It's a pseudo-question, in effect, posing as - impersonating so to speak - a metaphysical question. Categorical "why"-questions presuppose intentional-agency, which begs the question 'Why there is something rather than nothing?' in so far as 'something' also includes this presupposed intentional-agency. Reformulated, however, as 'Why is there anything at all?', dropping the literally vacuous term "nothing", allows us to translate this categorical "why" into a hypothetical (though fundamental) "how"-question which presupposes physical causation instead.I'm confused as to why you would cross out metaphysical questioning, — 3017amen
↪TheMadFool
It's a "with humor" response, as per the OP. Taken literally misses the joke. — 180 Proof
↪TheMadFool
I gave the only reasonable, two-part (complementary) "answer" I've found to date:
(because)
• There is nothing to stop "anything at all" from coming-to-be, etc. ~Atomism (metaphysics)
• "Nothing is unstable."
~F. Wilczek, et al (physics)
— 180 Proof — 180 Proof
So, 3017amen, do you have any questions that haven't been asked of me by TheMadFool and already answered — 180 Proof
Cognitive Neuroscience.Sure, try some of these (they certainly relate to something/nothing viz self-aware conscious Beings ):
What method best explains my will to live or die? — 3017amen
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.What method can best explain the reason I choose to love or not love?
Cultural Anthropology. Ethnolinguistics. Sociology of Religion. Embodied Cognition.What method can best explain the nature of my sense of wonder ?
Scientific materialism.What method can best explain the nature of causation ?
By definition, all effects "must have a cause"; but "all events" are not effects. With respect to how things are, what we know (i.e. have 'testable good explanations' for) matters regardless of whatever "we believe".(Why should we believe that all events must have a cause.)
Cultural Anthropology. Ethnolinguistics. Sociology of Religion. Embodied Cognition.What method can best explain the nature of my reaction to seeing the color red, and/or my:reaction to music that I love?
'Hierarchical syntactic generalizability' (algorithms) as a spandral - an accidental, emergent, by-product (cultural acquistion e.g. education, etc) - of a very large forebrain adapted to making better predictions of (heuristics for) dynamic environments usually without sufficient information or time.Why do I have the ability to perform gravitational calculations when dodging falling objects do not require those mathematical skills for survival?
Blame or thank the 'evolutionary history of our species'.180, why do we have those something's?
Well, up until about two hundred fifty millennia ago this roughly 13.8 billion year old universe was a "possible world without human consciousness", so yeah, of course, and it will be so again for many hundreds of billions of years more after we go extinct. The pre-human past and the extinct-human future are "other possible worlds" just like the epochs before and epoches after your "self-awareness", 3017amen, or mine have come and gone. "Human consciousness", in the vast cosmic scheme of things, is - there are no significant, intelligible, grounds (thus far) to doubt - a vanishingly brief anomaly.Couldn't there be other possible world's without human consciousness/self-awareness?
Who said it isn't?
(Besides, only statements (or concepts) are or are not "metaphysical" so the question doesn't make (much) sense.) — 180 Proof
Your question (1) isn't relevant to our exchange - I never claimed or implied anything about "the Will" - and (2) it also doesn't make sense to me for reasons given (in parenthesis). — 180 Proof
You asked me "what about the Will is not metaphysical" and I replied I've never claimed or implied anything about "the Will", so why did you ask in the first place and keep on asking? If you have anything intelligent to say that's not a non sequitur vis-à-vis anything I've said, then now's the time to say it, 3017. Otherwise, move along; I've done you the courtesy of posting clear answers to a list of arbitrary questions, so make your tendentious point - apparently you don't agree with something I wrote in this post - or go diddle yourself somewhere - with someone - else.Is it not relevant because you said so? — 3017amen
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