Why is it called spacetime?

Why isn't the whole universe lucid as oppose to spacial because space wouldn't exist without the big bang?

When I look at reality, I look at environment. When I consider time, I consider vital parts of environment. Is space as vital as star matter?

How can time run through space when I'm running on a planet? In theory, it would need to use Earth's ground, to go through me. It goes through the Earth is illogical, like a big human ego, rather than something more sane, something related to a lucid universe not a spacial one.

If you say it goes through Earth you say it's like a downward pressure. It can't go through both Earth and humans.

I understand that the universe is finite, but that the process which encapsulates it is eternal. When regressed to a point prior to the creation of space, I'm not so sure that there is not still movement within this primordial thing, i.e. time within the primordial as opposed to macrocosmic time which is the time that is observed external to us as change.

Maybe this is similar to this other dimension, or potentiality you are referring.

To a stone age man water from the sky is something from nothing . Until he understands how weather and rain actually works . Or do you believe we understand everything ? I don't .

Virtual particles obviously require something to exist. If none of this were here, there's no reason to assume they would be here either. I can just as easily claim they come from something as nothing, unless you can show me where nothing is on a map.

"They just appear," well, they're appearing in a reality there's no reason to assume they could exist independent of.

I think part of the salience of virtual particles here is that they are offered as explanations for why events occur, but have no explanation for why they occur themselves. Hence at least the illusion of something from nothing.

It's worth a look at the logical structure of

You can not have something out of nothing — Colin Cooper

It's what Watkins called an all-and-some proposition - an existential statement within the scope if a universal: "for every X there is a Y"... for every something there is a something else.

Such statements, like all universal statements, are not provable but are falsifiable. "All swans are white" can be shown to be false by producing a black swan; but you cannot examine every swan to check if it is white - there may always be one you missed.

But further, in common with all existential statements, one cannot infer that it is true without committing the error of induction. That is, the following is invalid: here is a white swan, there is a white swan... hence all swans are white.

By putting the two together in an all-and-some proposition, one creates a statements that is neither provable nor disprovable.

SO the argument will proceed as follows:
C: You can't have something out of nothing
B: you can't prove that
C: but it is a really strong intuition; it makes sense.
B: But here is a something out of nothing (virtual particles)
C: That just means you haven't found the something... it must be there somewhere, you haven't looked hard enough.

And that's where @Colin Cooper, @neonspectraltoast, and @Possibility are at this point in the discussion. Oh, and perhaps @graham.

The notion that you cannot have something from nothing is a little bit of mythology that those with religious tendencies tend to grasp on to as strongly as they can.

The usual comeback will be to fail to understand the logic, pointing to some supposed flaw. This sort of response tells us more about the poster than the post.

But here is the thing. Accepting uncaused events is part and parcel of quantum mechanics as it is accepted by most physicist. That is, the part above that says "but it is a really strong intuition; it makes sense" is rejected by a large number of well-educated and informed individuals.

Hence the intellectual brace of uncaused causes falters and fails.

...and it's not just virtual particles. It's double slit experiments - nothing causes the photon to go left instead of right. It's atomic decay - nothing causes this uranium atom to decay now, but not that one. The list goes on.

And again, what is salient is that intelligent, practical folk accept these uncaused events as part of the mechanism that allows all our electronic devices to function.

That is what undermines the mythical supposition that we can't have something from nothing.

It's not literally nothing causing these things. Nothing can't do anything, and they are one in the same as something.

It's not literally nothing causing these things. Nothing can't do anything, and they are one in the same as something. — neonspectraltoast

I have nothing in my pocket. It causes me to wonder where my handkerchief went.

It seems the more reasonable assumption would be to assume they come from something, since something is what exists and where they occur. They're not absolutely uncaused. They exist because reality exists. Reality already existing, it seems odd to me to say they simply occur for no reason at all. Or that they come from nothing.

No, I guarantee you there is something in your pocket. Nothing can't "be" anywhere. It's main attribute is that it has no being.

B: But here is a something out of nothing (virtual particles)

Claiming that virtual particles are a something out of nothing might be a bit of a metaphysical stretch. Please correct me if I am wrong, but virtual particles are considered to be short term perturbations in the quantum field, whereas as so called ordinary particles are long term perturbations. So, even virtual particles require the underlying quantum field. They may not have causes in a classical sense, whatever that might be, but they are not "somethings" from nothing.

I have nothing in my pocket. It causes me to wonder where my handkerchief went.

Funny, but a bit flippant. The easy retort is that what causes you to wonder where your handkerchief went is your finding nothing in your pocket. But your finding nothing in your pocket is very definitely not nothing.

You are right, my discussion slides between uncaused causes and something for nothing. I will take as my defence, that what I am arguing against is often presented as "Every event has a cause, and hence something cannot come from nothing". Not every event has a cause.

Not every event has a cause

That I am inclined to believe is the consensus amongst physicists, hidden variable theories having had their day. But I'm not sure it is causation that is really the heart of this issue for most people. In QM as well as classical physics, an event is an observable phenomenon. Events that can be explained using classical physics are usually taken to be those that have causes. Events that cannot be explained using classical physics, but which can be accounted for with quantum mechancial physics, are those which are deemed not to have causes. Nevertheless, even uncaused events have explanations. So, it looks like everything has an explanation. But what about the explanations themselves? Perhaps it is a category mistake to even pose the question whether an explanation has an explanation.

Yep. The further, less flippant point is that talk of nothing is fraught with misunderstanding.

"Nothing" gains its meaning in negating "something"; in ways not dissimilar to Austin's treatment of "real". That I have nothing in my pocket is not the same as my having nothing in my bank account or nothing in my head. The meaning of "nothing" comes from the absence of an expected something.

But we are tempted to talk about there being absolutely nothing, and here language goes on holiday, because it becomes very unclear what the absolute something is with which we are to contrast the absolute nothing.

You can see this fumbling in this very thread, in

Nothingness (from our perspective) is potential existence. — Possibility

and in

it is connected to "Dark Matter" — Colin Cooper

and

that thing was God. — CorneliusCoburn

edit: oh, and perhaps in

what about the explanations themselves? — jkg20

You deserve a better explanation.

So the all-and-some logic above applies to "every event has an explanation".

Intellectual honesty requires that we admit that we do not know.

Else we become like the Pope in the Dave Allen Joke...

You can see this fumbling in this very thread,

Agreed. And not just this thread.

Hilarious, I'll be passing that joke off as my own very soon! I might get away with it too.

edit: oh, and perhaps in

what about the explanations themselves? — jkg20

I get the point, which is why I hinted at the possibility of a category mistake. It's late where I am, after some sleep I will try to think of some circumstances where it might make sense to ask of an explanation why it is the explanation. If there are any, then there will be some sense to the idea that an explanation has an explanation. To be honest, though, I'm not entirely convinced I'll be able to come up with anything, and even if I did whether it will be useful in proving the principle of sufficient reason.

So the all-and-some logic above applies to "every event has an explanation".

Intellectual honesty requires that we admit that we do not know.

Yes, but my intellectual ambition requires that I stretch myself beyond my limits.

my intellectual ambition requires that I stretch myself beyond my limits. — jkg20

Well, I guess the black cat might be there...

:lol:

...virtual particles are considered to be short term perturbations in the quantum field, — jkg20

There's more here, that might be of philosophical interest. Take another all-and-some proposition, a bit of physics mythology: Energy can never be created nor destroyed (for every place energy appears to disappear, there is another place were the same quantity of energy appears...)

Now to make this work, physicists introduced a book keeping trick called potential energy. And it works.

Perhaps quantum fields are another book keeping trick.

(...this by way of trying to undermine my own argument.)

Could human action in a large part be said to be the same, without a cause?

Nothing cause me to go look for my handkerchief...

So far we haven't proven a cause, though there are theories that our actions are predetermined. I don't think so...I think individual identity is a wild card. I don't think it's really definable in philosophical or scientific terms. I wonder if particles have identities in some form.

If you could lay out your logic for us, we will be able to test it. I cannot speak for Banno, but I think I have sufficient knowlege of pure mathematics and the technical aspects of quantum mechanics to follow along and at least know at which points to start asking for clarifications. — jkg20

Oh, sorry - I didn’t mean ‘logic’ in the mathematical sense. My approach to this is intuitive (I’m an Arts major) so it’s likely you’ll have a good laugh if I attempt to ‘lay out’ any mathematical logic formulation.

The way I see it, all possibility exists in a relational structure that initially has no intelligence whatsoever. All possibility encompasses pure fantasy and unimaginable possibilities, beyond logic, rationality and probability. If all information means the same, then there is no intelligence, no understanding. For anything to matter at all, there must be a way to distinguish between all meaning - not to determine what doesn’t matter, but to understand what does matter.

Shannon describes information as ‘the difference that makes a difference’ - the manifestation of an interaction or relation between two physical systems. If there is no possible information about what matters, then one key difference that would make a difference to possibility is the existence of potential or value. So, it makes sense that the initial interaction of all possibility manifests a broad and unrealised potential for... something.

This maximum potential, too, has no information, no intelligence. If everything is only random potential, then the difference that would make a difference between interacting potential is action. So an interaction between random potentiality manifests a random release of what we understand as energy, force and attraction: the four-dimensional universe in action.

This is the beginning of time, as it were: an uninformed event, a single manifestation of potential. Interaction between random energy, force and gravitational events manifest random particles of this potential information: something that matters and has potential in a relational structure of space - a Big Bang, with particles differentiating in relation to potential expansion, and then velocity, and finally potential distance/energy: the foundation of atomic relational structure.

The actual, macro-level physical universe begins here, and strives to fulfil its potential - piecing together information regarding this 6D relational structure of energy, direction, space, time, value and meaning - through interaction. At each dimensional level of awareness, there is a minority of dynamic between the integrated information of a relatively stable system and the vague, developing awareness of potential information - that what really matters is somehow more.

Suppose that the block universe is a thing. Everything that has or will happen is fixed in the glue of the block.

There you are, stuck in 2020. You can see the past, but not the future.

And yet you are obligated to choose.

Of course, the choice you will make is there, fixed in the block.

But you do not know what choice you will make.

And yet you must choose.

Causation, free will, predetermination and all that crap are irrelevant to the fact of the choice.

That's where Existentialism has it right.

It's a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.

That has nothing to do with the role our identity plays, though. It belongs to us, regardless of a block universe.