I think both your and 's points have value so maybe there's a synthesis available. You are right that there are far more configurations of things than of nothing, making something more likely over time. But time began, as far as we can tell, with things.

In usual quantum cosmologies, there exists at least a field (the inflaton field) which decayed from a higher energy state to a lower one probabilistically. This decay could effectively mark the start of the clock. (There are alternatives.) But that doesn't answer the question: why is there something to decay from rather than nothing? What would 'nothing' mean here? It could mean the ground state of the inflaton field: had the universe always been in this ground state, there would be no other state it could explore. No particles could be created, and no symmetry breaking into the fields we know about. It would be static and therefore timeless.

But even that ground state exists in an N-dimensional state space called Hilbert space. Even in the static ground state of the inflaton field, why does Hilbert space have N dimensions and not 0?

I think the soundest concept of 'nothing' we can have is precisely this 0-dimensional Hilbert space of the inflaton field: this is not a nothing in which 'no thing' happens to exist, but the nothing in which the very possibility of a thing cannot exist, since there are precisely zero allowed states, not even static, empty ground states.

Your answer seems the correct one in this case, but we have to treat probability in a quantum way, i.e. as superpositions of ANDs rather than as ORs. The multiverse might be a superposition of every possible state space, including the 0-dimensional one. We inevitably find ourselves in a not-nothing universe because we can't find ourselves in the nothing one (the anthropic principle) and because the hypervolume of the not existing universe must be zero (a 0-dimensional universe has a 0 volume, so no matter how high it's amplitude, its actual probability is zero). This makes a something rather than nothing inevitable, and without metaphysics (other than the trivial one, plus some interpretation of QM).

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:

The fundamental question of metaphysics asks, "why does the universe exist?" — TheMadFool

I think it's worth pointing out that this is quite a modern question, first raised by Leibniz and again by Heidegger. Of course, Liebniz also provided an answer, which is the basis of his 'best of all possible worlds' argument. 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. But, as mentioned, the cosmic anthropic principle seems to provide a hint of an answer, which is that the universe is such that complex matter and intelligent beings are bound to arise from it. (I just shelled out for a copy of Barrow & Tipler's Anthropic Cosmological Principle which goes into all these arguments in painstaking detail. Oh, and also Jim Holt's book, Why does the World Exist.)

Have you heard about the strife that ensued from David Albert's review of Krauss' 'Universe from Nothing'? Albert asked:

Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? Krauss is more or less upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that every­thing he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted.

...ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electro­magnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in “A Universe From Nothing” — the laws of relativistic quantum field theories — are no exception to this. The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.

Krauss reacted furiously, calling Albert - a tenured philosophy professor with additional degrees in physics - a moron and a know-nothing. The story goes that Daniel Dennett stepped in and counselled Krauss over it. ('Come on, old chap....')

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.

In my humble opinion, assuming god created the universe... — TheMadFool

You do realise that this is the one assumption that methdological naturalism cannot make?

the mechanistic answer is a permanent fixture of any answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics. — TheMadFool

It might be a result of the failure to understand the nature of metaphysics, like an attempt to square the circle or make a perpetual motion engine, due to the influence of the idea of ‘mechanism’ on contemporary thought. (Yes, blame Descartes, again.)

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

Yeah but everything is also not something.

To those who care

What exactly do we mean by "something"? Its logical definition is "at least ONE thing" but the question then is what's a "thing"? Do people, cats, pancakes, oil, air, fire, etc. - those to which the word "thing" is usually applied to -count as things in the metaphysical sense relevant to the fundamental question of metaphysics?

The answer is no. Objects that we encounter in everyday life like those I mentioned above aren't the something in the question, why is there something rather than nothing? The something in the question, if that something is claimed to be more than ONE in number, has to be made up of distinct individuals.

The everyday objects that I mentioned above do appear distinct from each other but it only takes a little digging to realize that they're all composed of particles (atoms). There's a sameness at the particle level that precludes treating objects we come across in our daily lives as distinct from each other and if that can't be done, there's only ONE kind of something - the particles themselves.

However, thankfully, particles come in many stripes - according to Google, there are 31 known fundamental particles and they're all distinct from each other in the sense they can't be reduced to another subparticle as a common denominator like everyday objects could be [to particles]. At this level - the level of the 31 particles - each particle is a something - distinct and independent

Suppose that the total number of configurations possible with these 31 particles is N [it's a very tedious process to calculate the exact number].

The P(Life given Something) = 1/N as only 1 of the configurations of the N possible support life, the configuration that has ALL 31 particles (this universe)

1. P(Nothing) = 1(N+1)

2. P(Something) = N/(N+1)

3. P(Something AND Life) = P(Something) * P(Life given Something) = N/(N+1) * 1/N = 1/(N+1)

4. P(Something) > P(Nothing) as N > 1.

This answers the fundamental question of metaphysics.

5. P(Something AND Life) = 1/(N+1) = P(Nothing)

This is where the anthropic principle enters the stage. The universe will appear to be such that it permits carbon-based life.

Yeah but everything is also not something. — 180 Proof

:up:

Something is at least ONE but not ALL

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

Not everything is not necessarily something. It could possibly be nothing as well.

I think the soundest concept of 'nothing' we can have is precisely this 0-dimensional Hilbert space of the inflaton field: this is not a nothing in which 'no thing' happens to exist, but the nothing in which the very possibility of a thing cannot exist, since there are precisely zero allowed states, not even static, empty ground states. — Kenosha Kid

Contradiction.

It is more accurate to say that there is always something. Even when thinking about the opposite of something, you are still thinking of something, even though that thought is about "nothing".

All I'm saying is that whether god exists or not, there has to be a way the universe came into existence. There's got to be a process to creation whether or not god initiated it.

I just realized that my probabilisitic answer doesn't actually do the job of providing a mechanistic explanation for why there's something rather than nothing? It's, unfortunately, not a scientific theory like Lawrence Krauss' . However, it does prove that the probability of something existing is greater than the probability of nothing.

Not everything is not necessarily something. It could possibly be nothing as well. — Harry Hindu

Not everything can't be nothing because not nothing isn't necessarily everything. Not nothing and not everything can both be in something.

All I'm saying is that whether god exists or not, there has to be a way the universe came into existence. There's got to be a process to creation whether or not god initiated it. — TheMadFool

Einstein used to say 'I can't accept that God plays dice with the Universe'. Bohr used to reply 'Don't try and tell God how to run the universe'. Maybe 'process' is just an anthropomorphic conception.

I got a mischevious idea from Terry Eagleton in his review of The God Delusion. 'The Creation is the original acte gratuit. God is an artist who did it for the sheer love or hell of it, not a scientist at work on a magnificently rational design that will impress his research grant body no end.' Maybe the whole universe is, as Hindus say, a 'play' or 'sport' (lila). What impedes us, is our tendency to take it so seriously. 'Those in love know all in life is a game'.

Not everything can't be nothing because not nothing isn't necessarily everything. Not nothing and not everything can both be in something. — TheMadFool

NOT some thing isnt necessarily nothing either, but can be some other thing. Prove that nothing is anything other than a thought - which is something.

NOT some thing isnt necessarily nothing either — Harry Hindu

Something is at least ONE thing.

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

I don't see how this follows. How does the number of configurations of things make something more likely than nothing?

But time began, as far as we can tell, with things. — Kenosha Kid

Exactly. What came before determines what comes after. How does nothing begat something?

And nothing is an idea, therefore nothing is something. Is a vacuum something or nothing?

Maybe 'process' is just an anthropomorphic conception. — Wayfarer

Thereby hangs a tale :up: That's anthropomorphism. We really need to take a long, hard look at our assumptions.

'The Creation is the original acte gratuit. — Wayfarer

God as an artist in the grips of a creative impulse rather than as an engineer, methodically working with a carefully drawn up blueprint. I like that idea. It explains a lot or, more accurately, does away with the need to explain anything. :chin:

However, it does prove that the probability of something existing is greater than the probability of nothing. — TheMadFool

Probabilities are just ideas stemming from our ignorance. Reality just is a certain way. It's not more probable to be a certain way than another. It already is a certain way. How it is, is what we are ignorant of, therfore how it is is probabilistic in our eyes.

Your probabilistic answer doesn't provide anything that we didn't already know - that something exists.

And nothing is an idea, therefore nothing is something. — Harry Hindu

:smile: I'm not in a position to comment.

Probabilities are just ideas stemming from our ignorance. Reality just is a certain way. It's not more probable to be a certain way than another. It already is a certain way. How it is, is what we are ignorant of, therfore how it is is probabilistic in our eyes.

Your probabilistic answer doesn't provide anything that we didn't already know - that something exists. — Harry Hindu

The probabilistic answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics I provided doesn't have as its conclusion that "something exists". As you rightly pointed out, we already know that. What it does or what I want it to do is provide an explanation as to why "something exists".

However not something is nothing. — TheMadFool

Is not a bachelor a married man or nothing?

The probabilistic answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics I provided doesn't have as its conclusion that "something exists". As you rightly pointed out, we already know that. What it does or what I want it to do is provide an explanation as to why "something exists". — TheMadFool

Seems like a silly question to me. I don't see how you could even set out answering such a question.

Probabilities are just ideas stemming from our ignorance — Harry Hindu

I recall you making this assertion before and I'm interested in putting it under the philosophical microscope for closer examination. Are you saying probability has more to do with us, specifically our ignorance rather than being a real feature of reality itself?

I remember reading a book that talks of subjective probability which loosely translated comes close to your claim that probability is about ignorance - probability is about us, our ignorance, rather than about reality. As per the book, there's objective probability too which, as far as I can tell, is an acknowledgement that certain phenomena in the natural world are themselves probabilistic. An example the book gives is radioactivity - there's no way of knowing, says the book, which particle will decay and when and that's just another way of saying chance is a feature of reality itself and not necessarily a matter of human ignorance as you seem to be suggesting. Then there's quantum physics which too, to my knowledge, exhibits probabilistic behavior and according to some sources this isn't because we're lacking the information that would make quantum physics non-probabilistic but because quantum physics is inherently probabilistic.

What say you?

Seems like a silly question to me — Harry Hindu

Explain yourself. Why "silly"?

Is not a bachelor a married man or nothing? — Harry Hindu

Not a bachelor is not nothing because a bachelor is something. So, yes, not a bachelor is a married man. And...?

Not a bachelor is not nothing because a bachelor is something. So, yes, not a bachelor is a married man. And...? — TheMadFool

What you said here is incorrect:

However not something is nothing. — TheMadFool

Then not something isn't necessarily nothing.

Explain yourself. Why "silly"? — TheMadFool

I did explain myself. I said, that I don't see how you could set out answering such a question. Why something as opposed to what - nothing? Didn't I already point out that "nothing" is just an idea, which is something, so "nothing" doesn't exist except as a thought in your mind.

Even if you were to somehow prove that nothing exists, you'd have to show how one is more likely than the other, which would require knowledge of what makes one more likely than the other, which can only be something, not nothing. It's a question whose concepts twist back upon itself, creating a paradox.

Are you saying probability has more to do with us, specifically our ignorance rather than being a real feature of reality itself? — TheMadFool

Yes. Probabilities are just concepts related to our ignorance of the causal relationships of which we are talking about.

An example the book gives is radioactivity - there's no way of knowing, says the book, which particle will decay and when and that's just another way of saying chance is a feature of reality itself and not necessarily a matter of human ignorance as you seem to be suggesting. Then there's quantum physics which too, to my knowledge, exhibits probabilistic behavior and according to some sources this isn't because we're lacking the information that would make quantum physics non-probabilistic but because quantum physics is inherently probabilistic.

What say you? — TheMadFool

To say that there is no way of knowing indicates that we are definitely talking about ourselves and not some objective feature of reality. I guess the question is, how do we determine if probabilities are objective or subjective?

Probabilities are the chances some effect will occur given some pre-existing conditions (causes). So, you seem to be asking how likely something exists given some pre-existing conditions. What are those pre-existing conditions - something, or nothing?

It explains a lot or, more accurately, does away with the need to explain anything — TheMadFool

That review is what got me into philosophy forums. If you only read one of the many links I post make it that one. (Although ‘in the grips’ can’t be right. I’m often ‘in the grips’ of things, including artistic endeavours, but God is never in the grips of anything. And incidentally it does address the OP.)

Then there's quantum physics which too, to my knowledge, exhibits probabilistic behavior and according to some sources this isn't because we're lacking the information that would make quantum physics non-probabilistic but because quantum physics is inherently probabilistic. — TheMadFool

That’s right. There’s no way of knowing. Nothing to do with either subjectivity or objectivity. It’s not as if there’s an unknown cause, but that events on this level are truly unpredictable. That is the basis of Einstein’s objection about ‘God playing dice’. But unfortunately for Einstein, and Harry, in this context there’s no way in which ‘things truly are’.

The question is why is there something rather than nothing, not why is the something apparently quantum mechanical and not otherwise. But I do take your point. It at first suggests some law in there that allows quantum mechanical things to happen such that such a multiverse could begin.

Firstly, most of QM is irrelevant. We're not really talking QM, but rather chiefly one of its postulates: the superposition principle. To us, the superposition principle seems like an exotic thing because we're used to having things seem single-valued: the cup is on the desk, and therefore not on the window sill. Is the superposition principle a law that the universe must observe in order to exist? I'd say not: having a single value is a special case of having multiple values. So I think it's the other way around: a reality without a superposition principle is the one that needs explaining.

The rest of QM, including the Born rule which I implicitly referred to when stating that the probability of finding the 0-dimensional state space would be zero (which after I posted I realised was wrong), is not required. In fact, without observers, half of QM is pretty meaningless. If it is possible to have a universe that does not obey a wave equation (and I can't see why not), wang that into the mixing bowl as well. As for the Born rule itself or something similar, this is only meaningful if there's an observer outside of the multiverse. It doesn't really matter what the probability of a given universe is since they do not interact. (This might be different if our multiverse chanced upon another and we needed to explain why that multiverse appeared to have only one universe in it... the equivalent of always measuring live cat or dead cat.)