Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - Why Is There Anything At All?
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- Опубликовано: 25 янв 2023
- Why is there a world, a cosmos, something, anything instead of absolutely nothing at all? If nothing existed, there would be, well, ‘nothing’ to explain. To have anything existing demands some kind of explanation. Of all the big questions, this is the biggest. Why anything? Why not nothing? What can we learn from the absence of nothing?
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Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an American novelist and Professor of Philosophy.
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Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
I have a question for Rebecca. Why is there anything at all? Never got an answer here.
The honest video:
00:01: "why there is anything?"
00:02: " we don't know. Thanks all, bye."
The end.
Yes ! I'm afraid Robert has wasted
his Life pursuing that very quest .
@@2msvalkyrie529 What a presumptuous insult- I would say he's far from wasting his life and has gained tons of knowledge, friends, and worthwhile experience along his quest. And he's helped tons of ppl to at least start asking themself the big questions- which in itself is a huge accomplishment.
@@stoneysdead689 it was not an insult.
Philosophically, is an unanswerable question.
You cannot seat there and wonder why, every answer you find that way is useless.
If you hope an answer esists, just study astrophysic and cosmology.
@@IoDavide1 LOL- I used to think like that- then I grew up.
@@stoneysdead689 well, evidently you need to grow up a bit more
Nothing has allowed all this to exist we literally take nothing for granted when nothing has been around just as long
A long version of “I have no idea”
Do you avoid complex questions?
@@James-gk8ip Certainly not. But I’ll paraphrase Woody Guthrie: Any fool can make something complicated. It takes genius to make it simple.
If we knew the answer, would we understand it? If we understood it, would we accept it?
Excellent observations. Thanks. Thought provoking.
The answer is yes.
Forty-two
If we accepted it, would we be fine?
If we knew the answer but didn't understand it then we would not know that we know it.
"Why" questions are for metaphysical Theologians and Philosophers..",How" is for Science!
I'm neither a metaphysical Theologian nor a Philosopher, yet I seemingly ask the question "Why". Or are you just implying that we should leave the "Why" questions to those who are more "scholarly"?
@@johnbrzykcy3076
Yes but unless the why can be answered..what is the point?
Because speed of light is constant - answers why. Do you are lying
Because we need a place to stack the turtles.
This is why you do what you do. Thanks!
I 100% agree with Dr. Kuhn on this one. Too many times, intellectuals will give unsatisfactory answers to this question and imply that there is no explanation, that things “just are”. It drives me crazy. I would rather someone speculate while also being honest that we do not really know. “Why is there something rather than nothing” deserves deep contemplation and discussion.
To me, this was one of the more refreshing conversations I’ve seen on Closer to Truth about this topic.
I agree with you. May I suggest some books where the topic is treated seriously and not whimsically?
@@Garghamellal Sure, fire away! I should mention though, that I do hold a theological worldview. My reasons for that venture outside of science, although I do believe you can garner supporting evidence from science as well. I was just approaching the question from a purely scientific point of view, with no preconceived ideas.
@@JabberW00kie i happen myself to have a theological worlview, but unlike you i do not think science can help in this regard. That said, you should certainly read Milton Munitz's "The Mystery of existence", followed by Whiterall's "The Problem of Existence". Also of note "The Faces of existence" by John Post. Besides, i have recently also read "The Riddle of existence" by Nicholas Rescher though I have found it unsatisfactory. There are several others which elude me know. On a different angle, you could read "Why there is something rather than nothing" by Bede Rundle in case you need a strong injection of physicalism:))
Do you know what a word "explain" means? It means "ex-" and "plain" = "make it flat", and make it simple. When you try to explain some phenomenon in english words (and a finite amount thereof), you imply that words contain a comparable amount of complexity in them. But sometimes they don't. Don't believe me? Try and explain what is love.
Instead of "to explain" use "to make it clear". This one does not imply steamrolling the intrinsic complexity of the phenomenon in question, but rather respects it - and so should you
@@Garghamellal Thanks for the recommendations! I should stress that I wasn’t implying that one could arrive at a theological worldview strictly through scientific means. Rather, I believe that some of the conclusions we have reached through science are in harmony with a theological worldview, and even in some cases, seem to reinforce such. At the very least, I don’t see them as incompatible, as some claim.
I could listen to Rebecca talking about philosophy all day, she's brilliant and sensible and has a delightful way of expressing her ideas.
I agree! Why don't we see more of her?
Hard to believe that one word, (nothing), makes everyone's mind go completely blank.......
She's terrific. A clear speaking philosopher, which is not surprising given her affinity for the Greeks.
I love this series and the scientists and researchers interviewed. But so often guests will imply that to ask these questions that you ask in this episode, is to be naive, misguided. They are so rooted in what we know rather than valuing, through philosophical discussion, the immensity of what we don’t know. I always find that off putting, especially since the guests steeped in the science have so much to add to the discussion. But THIS guest was refreshing, necessary, helpful! Thanks for the breadth of experiences among guests that you are bringing to this series!
Smuggled into this question is the assumption that "Nothing" is more natural or probable than something. If Something is more probably than Nothing, then that changes the question to Why WOULDN'T There Be Anything At All? For some reason people act like it's a burden to explain Why Something opposed to Nothing but don't feel a burden to explain why Eternal Nothing opposed to Frequent Somethings.
Awareness is known by awareness alone.
This is the most profound question we can ask, and yet, I think we'll never be able to comprehend the rules and logic that underly the answer. And that's wonderful.
We do know alright….
I have no reason to think there is a why at all.
GOD
Why does she exist?@@thelot9880
whoa! very cool .. more
I’ve chosen to believe that it’s a brute fact that existence itself/ultimate reality had no beginning and has no end. It transcends causality but still must be a brute fact that it’s not nothingness. It just always was.
With no purpose what so ever
@@Ner141 Also probably true. It's our ego and our intellect that want everything to be finite or definable on human terms.
I agree but I think it’s purposeless like playing music or dancing is purposeless. It doesn’t serve a goal but it’s self justifying. It’s true that we suffer but we also experience joy and both prove to me that existence is inherently meaningful.
if there was nothing, it would have to be in relation to something, nothing dosen't make sense, until there's something, then nothing is the difference between everything that is something, and what would remain if there wasn't anything, never has been and never could, that's what nothing is, its impossible if there's something
If we have an expanding universe then nothing is still available.
I kind of like the infinite series of causations explanation. There might be a lot of parallell such series of existence, of course.
But they are of course right that it does not explained why those series of existence exists.
I somehow get the feeling that this is a bit related to the fact that the set of all sets cannot be a set. The set of all existences is not an existence.
Or something like that :D
If she just said 'I don't know' it would have saved us 9 minutes and saved us hearing the word 'causality' 40 times.
'Something' is not the opposite of 'nothing'. 'Something' , or 'everything' , is never replete .
Rob Davenport
Dr. Kuhn, you're trying to exercise against Gödel's theorem. Asking these questions is basically the same as trying to resolve liar's paradox or figuring out if god can create a rock he cannot lift
The year 2023 is the great skull and bones/freemasons number 322, this is the year of the big one, there are things coming that humanity can't even fathom.
can infinitesimal time instantiate mathematical laws of nature?
"There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the "particle" of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the MATRIX of all matter." - Max Planck, Father of Quantum Physics
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness."
1) As far as I can tell, there is no good reason to assume "nothingness" is a possible state of reality. The evidence we have is that something exists, and it may not be possible to show that it could have been, or ever was, otherwise.
2) You can ask whatever questions you want. However, those who make the most influential progress are often those who ask question for which we have extension background information and the means by which to investigate further. That's why literature reviews are so important in academic study. Asking questions about ultimate initial conditions without having reasonable models for more than the most recent few steps seems like it will yield little value beyond postulation, with very little chance of making useful predictive models.
Nothing seems a lot simpler than something. It seems reasonable to feel it’s somehow more likely for there to be just a yawning void of nothing. Universes seem pretty complicated things just to magic up, wouldn’t you say?
@@Allyballybean Nothingness could be simpler. I don't know whether I can conclude it, since I've never encountered a clear definition of nothingness that is conceivable to me, well defined and inarguably nothingness. Absence of anything sounds straightforward, until you try to think of each thing that have to be removed in order to reach nothingness. Sabine Hossenfelder has an interesting video on nothingness if you're interested. But in any case, I don't know if reality permits nothingness. The one thing I know most confidently is that something exists. One of many things I don't know is whether nothing can exist.
@@Allyballybean Although I would argue that complexity seems to me to be related to how many concepts need to be invoked in order to describe behaviour. If different parts of the universe or different organisms had fundamentally different properties and underlying behaviours, that would be a more complicated universe. However, since the vast majority of behaviours in the universe can be described by a handful of relationships (fundamental forces + general relativity), the universe seems much less complex than most people expect. Of course, there are aspects that are not well understood, and perhaps others that may never be well understood. But the fact that almost all of the diversity of life is reducible to large systems of particles described well by quantum electrodynamics (chemical reactions and energy levels of electrons) should give people pause when they invoke life (which you didn't, but many do) as an example of the complexity of the universe. On the contrary, if different groups of organisms followed their own fundamental forces, that would be a much more complex universe than that which we experience.
@@Allyballybean Nothing may not exist by definition though. Nothing is the absence of something. There very concept of Nothing is defined as a condition contrasted with Something.
I find it more plausible that there is a creator that always just was, than most explanations I've heard about the very beginnings of anything... And I'm not religious at all.
I'm not very scientifically - minded and I don't reject those who propose answers from science. Like you, I tend to believe that "there is a Creator".
However my belief in a Creator does not necessarily negate a theory or answer within the scientific realm because I also think God created the laws of nature.
What do you think?
Well, now I love you here for this little discussion you have, Robert and Rebecca, the elegant way you both glide your cognitive process between the human knowns and unknowns.
Good discussion, congratulations!👍👍🙂
Possibility is fundamental. Possibility isn't a thing unto itself and is only defined by the limits placed on it. If there is literally nothing, then there are no limits and thus possibility is infinite.
EXACTLY
'No limits' sounds like a double negative to me. It says there are limits (if there were nothing). So if there were nothing, there would be limits so there would be no possibilities. I think. Lol
I think our questions what is knowledge, what is consciousness, what is being are interrelated, and so our answers to these questions are also interrelated. As a Bible believing Christian I believe:
1. God gave his laws which all, physical or metaphysical, derive from his central law to love Him and ourselves the way He loves us.
2. God's laws are valid. You cannot 'break' his laws of gravity or physical movement, for instance. If one should jump from some height, you do not break the laws of gravity, but you illustrate them. Exactly the same applies to God's so-called moral laws. If you steal, or murder, or blaspheme, or serve false gods, you wreck or destroy the meaning of your own life, of your existence.
3. So why is there anthing at all? Because God, according to the 'good pleasure of his will' (Eph1v5) spoke heaven and earth into existence, and also declared his will (laws) for what He had created. In creating heaven and earth, and giving his law(s) over heaven and earth, God revealed Himself as the God of love.
4. Consciousness, existence, knowledge all have to do with being or living in a relationship with God and with God's law(s). Not knowing God for example means actually, I believe, not loving God, i.e. being in a relationship of disobedience towards God's central law to love Him with all you have and love yourself the way He loves you, which is only possible through faith in God's Son, Jesus Christ.
Is there a fourth right angle Plato?
Nothing is anything less than the minimum of what we can measure.
I disagree, there are things both smaller and greater than what we can measure.
@@donnamarie3617
If there is no way to measure it (BTW: measurements of effects is a measurement methods) then there is no clue of existence and it is nothing.
We need first to identify what questions are valid? for example is it valid to ask "Why am I me?"
I think she perfectly described Digital Physics when she talked about the Spinozist part. We'll get there, eventually.
new moments in time become familiar only through experience & knowledge of said moments,,it all needed explaining in the instance ,,& I guess it's explanations that go on forever,,,followed by a lifetime of ,Why's & How's. We can all ask the Why's,,but we can't all follow the How's. That could all be bolloks though.
A cat only knows that food comes from a tin and is put in its bowl. It doesn't need to know where the tin came from, nor how it got filled, nor where the chicken in it came from, nor how the chicken were raised, nor what the weather is like where the chicken were raised, nor the stock market movements in the buying and selling of chicken meat, and so on. We are like that cat. We know what we need to know but there's an awful lot we don't know that we don't know.
We can understand, a cat cannot.
I completly agree with the "our brains haven't evolved enough to understand this question" which to me its pretty clear seeing as we grapple with these kind of questions and we came out with pure speculations without anything behind them, and the scientific method is useless against ontological problems. We don't understand consciousness either!
So yeah, its very pretentious (but very human/ape-like) to presume we can solve the most fundamental mystery of the universe with out current ape brains. VERY pretentious.
In fact it's this kind of emotional response to reject that possibility that sours my mouth. I think people reject it because it humbles us as species, as beings. To me it means hope. Yeah we may not be able to understand this big universe yet, but MAYBE in the far future our descendants will. Maybe. Theres no guarantee.
This frustrates lots of brilliant people because it makes us question our own cognitive biases.
And we are bad at spotting our own cognitive biases, let along recognize them and accept them. It also means a kind of surrendering. But I don't think as the human collective should stop questioning and discovering more amazing things, its just that by now its kinda obvious we are reaching a limit, a cognitive ceiling. Look at dark matter/energy, the intrinsic probabilistic nature of QM, understanding the infinite, and other million science related topics and subjects and also ontological questions like the one posed in this video. Our brain can barely keep up with the math coming out of experiments and all the pool of knowledge that its been produced day by day.
And instead of accepting this people come up with those extravagant possibilities that have more in common with religion and myth than with philosophy or science. Its blind faith. Religion do really put a hard cap on what to think and do, thats the death of human thought. This should be more rejected than any other thing.
Presuming our brain is more than enough to tackle anything this inmensely complex Universe has to throw at us is madly arrogant and we should known better by now.
On the other hand, If there was nothing, you'd have to ask "why is there nothing rather than something" or explain why you imagine "nothing" should be the default state of everything.
Hmmm... Maybe God Himself asked that question ( " why is there nothing" ) before He created the Cosmos!
Nothing includes no questioner, no question.
EXACTLY
Infinite regress might be intellectually tenable, but an ultimate endpoint is not. If I ever find the ultimate principles of the universe, I will still be left with the same question. Beauty is the ultimate principle? Value? Of course not! Why beauty or value? Same question. And the question can never be finally answered.
Hubris(?) or the mistake I saw in the last assumption that we, today are at the peak of the human capacity to understand. Also, yes the knowledge has increased since the time of Plato, but how much has the human capacity has changed? Not much I would say. What humans have done 2500 years ago -with the tools available to them- proves this.
Greetings from Jacksonville Florida USA. I don't understand why you "detest" the idea that the ultimate reality of the Universe - and beyond - is not only beyond our knowledge, but also beyond our comprehension, at least currently. If we have learned anything, it is that our vaunted reason actually is limited in so many ways, to numerous to recount here. Personally, I believe that my little cat will understand nuclear physics before we understand all of this. It is in the realm of religious belief, where factors other than reason are in play. I'm at peace with that.
Not this physicist but in general, for so called scientists, physicists give unintelligible bizarre explanations about the biggest questions. Just say we have no idea.
You typing in your mobile with comfort with help of science
Why is there anything at all ?
I think we all know the answer to that question.
More importantly, have you got any holiday plans this year ?
It's an interesting question, but I don't lose sleep over it.
Surely the ultimate "nothing" would have nobody thinking about it. Being thought about is a property of anything that is thought about, and "nothing" can have no properties.
Make your head hurt to think about it for too long.
I don't think she was buying his premise at the end. It's arrogant to think that we have it all figured out. Time is not on your side with that attitude. If we know it all now, then why keep asking?
our nature of understanding relies heavily on our ability to experience a certain reality...
how can something equate to nothing, anyway... if we say something came from nothing then an equal sign has to be attached to both... therefore what we consider as nothing must be something 🤔
A very special something.
@@farhadtowfiq6767 yes, very special indeed... another interesting and related question is: what is the purpose of the cycle of life...
@@r2c3 The goal/purpose is without any limit, nothing to limit. The other consequence of nothingness is the absolute unity of being. The goal and the path to the goal are one and the same. The cause and the reason for any existence at any level of complexity/gradation is love.
I think the closest we've got so far is the Zero Energy Universe hypothesis. It's not been verified yet, but the proposition is that when you take into account negative energy such as gravitational energy, the net energy of the universe is zero. If this is true, then it means in order to get a universe, all you need are the laws of quantum physics to apply. In which case a random quantum fluctuation is all it would take to create a universe, and in QM such fluctuations are essentially inevitable.
Of course it doesn't actually answer the question, because why those principles as against any others? But it would do two things. One is it reduces down the prerequisites for the existence of the universe to an actually very small set of principles that we can actually reason about. The other is that it shows that the existence of the universe is entirely consistent with and in fact an inevitable consequence of the knowable and intelligible principles of physics. So we don't yet know if the proposition is correct, but it's interesting to think about.
what if there are INFINITE number of universes, each with their own infinite set of laws? and your answer doesn't explain consciousness.
It feels like you’re arguing on a slightly different level to the question ‘why is there anything?’ . You’re already presupposing the potential for a universe to exist rather than nothing existing, by positing laws of nature. Why isn’t there just nothing at all, anywhere, any when ? No quantum mechanics, no nothing, just nothing?
@@Allyballybean excellent points.
@@Dion_Mustard"What if there are INFINITE number of universes" - What if there are? I think that, and the question of explaining consciousness, are just different questions. The ZEU hypothesis could co-exist with any number of answers to them.
@@Allyballybean As I went to very great pains to say in my post, the ZEU hypothesis doesn't answer those questions directly. What it does do, if it's correct, is massively cut down the number of things in physics that need explaining to a very few and everything else will flow from those. It's possible that once we have that done, it may be a lot easier to reason about how those specific 'laws' or principles might spontaneously arise. So it's speculation at this stage, sure, but provides a road map for making significant progress. We may never get to a definitive answer, but who knows.
I think what messes with people is the wording. There are no natural laws, only the ways in which things work.
The concept of "Nothing" represented by the number "0" (zero) did not exist in the beginning. The number "0" (zero) is a relatively recent human innovation in mathematics. But, there has always been "1" (one). The fact that one (1) exists and can generate the position/concept of "nothing" (0) shows that there first exists one (1). Thus, nothing (0) does not truly exist alone: One (1) must first exist that can generate the position/concept of nothing (0). Mathematically, Absolute nothing (0) "could be" expressed as 0 to the power of 0, which can equal 1. "Nothing" (0) IS "Something" (1); because, it comes from "Something" (1). Moreover, since Nothing (0 perceived) is not Nothing (0 actual), then it is possible for Something (1) to come from Nothing (0 actual). Because, Something (1) is inherently pre-existing within Nothing (0 actual), hence, 0 to the power of 0 can equal 1. Simply put, Something (1) exists before Nothing (0) can exist. In the beginning, there was Singularity (1).
Space is timeless. Infinity makes no sense to us, but it's a situation where time is literally inconsequential and therefore doesn't exist. Time is merely an illusion caused by perceived change. Once there is no matter, there's nothing to change. Massless particles experience the universe in this way.
Yeah, I don’t know either
If there is nothing, then the second law of thermodynamics (which states that energy cannot be destroyed only changed) is wrong. Most confusing!!
Like, we all are just sitting in a cosmic shell of time and space and trying to guessing, what else is there outside and how everything is, what it really is 🤔😄
Thank you for introducing us/me to this wonderful thinker.
You're kidding, right? She's a pseudo-intellectual loon. She's been ridiculed plenty of times in debates here on RUclips
God is a cup overflowing from within; the nature of the 'Good' is to create, to give. As something which is in lack only recieves, that which is sated from its self within itself may give for creation.
Finally Kuhn talks to an articulate woman.
The “nothing” has never been observed. There is always something be it matter or energy or both. Therefore it does not make sense to posit “nothing” or ask how something came from nothing
where would causation lead in the explanation of why anything at all? how could causation explain the cosmos, and before the cosmos?
Imagine a cup of water.
The shape of the cup determines the shape of the water.
What if, however, there were nothing to determine the shape of the water?
What if there were nothing to determine whether the water was even water?
What if... you took a break from your bong.
Space time matter are a subset or whatever of something unfathomable.
@robert Laurence Kuhn, there is an answer to this question, quite convincing. Contact for more info.
She never defined "nothing", which is the complete absence of MatterEnergy, SpaceTime, and by extension quantum fields. The reason these exist is because they were created by a nonphysical consciousness so that we should love Him.
I like your comments. I'm open minded to consider scientific claims but like you I believe " they were created by a nonphysical consciousness". And I really like when you added "so we should love Him".
Peace to you...
The absence of them entails nothing to create them. Even taking about causation you presuppose nature and its laws so the most reasonable explanation is that nature exists by necessity.
I have a subtle variation of the question, Why did this started 13,8 bn years ago and not, lets say, two weeks ago. I mean who dictates that thing?
Suppose I told you the answer. Then what would your next question be?
Beauty as a first cause is a very interesting idea. Maybe the universe was brought to life to make it possible for the Mass in B minor to exist.
Makes sense to me. I can't believe the idiocy about "nothing." It's certain fact that nothing can come from nothing and if anyone that can't see that he doesn't know what "nothing" means. Hence two immediate conclusions (1) Since the universe exists there _must_ be a Creator (I prefer "maker" since no one can create in sense of "out of nothing"), (2) the Maker must be his own necessity for existing - yep, unfathomable & awesome. There's more to say but YT Shdw bnns too much.
@@endpc5166 "Nothing" is not a well-defined term. It means different things to different people.
Meanwhile, we haven't figured out the source of our own consciousness, we are certainly not ready to answer this question.
I suspect the answer to the question "Why does anything exist?" is simply "because it can". If we just stay in the space of possibilities we will find our world and there might be no difference between a "possible world" and an "actual world".
In the beginning there was some disparaging of some scientists (LK?) who change the meaning of nothing we all know and love. That I agree with. But then later the notion of god was treated as not nothing itself by calling is outside of nothing. Not fair. Can we really treat nothing as truly nothing? :)
I remember one day when I was a small kid sitting across the table from my brother and it suddenly occurred to me, why was I inside my head looking at him through my eyeballs, instead of in his head looking at me through his eyeballs? It seemed like a fair enough question, but one that cannot possibly have and answer other than, just is. Maybe all the seemingly most important questions have the same trivial answer, it's all trivial and there is no answer.
"Put the lotion on the skin"
There is an answer: The universe must be congruent with pure nothingness. Nothingness comes in gradations from the trivial to the pure.
Why keep pursuing a question that has no answer, just enjoy and celebrate life for what it offers, not what it hides.
Surely we cannot understand everything.When we can only see such a tiny part of the universe
What is this room they’re in? 🤨🧐
Nothing is something that can’t be seen
it's logical to assume we haven't evolved enough ...
how long have we been conscious?
has our consciousness evolved over the last x-years?
and will it continue to evolve?
etc etc
The idea was Timaeus himself. Everyone gives credit to Plato. Plato just wrote it down, or stole it if you will. Timaeus was also da Vinci, but that is another story.
At the very bottom of reality there has to be a brute fact. An eternal brute fact. It’s just the way it is.
I suspect your right . But which brute fact ?
@@tonyatkinson2210 with regard to the question of why there is something rather than nothing, it a binary choice. They’re mutually exclusive. There is either one or the other. It’s just the way it is. The brute fact is that there is existence. Whether there is an objective truth to the nature of that existence…..who knows?
We just need better instrumentation to punch through to the next level of understanding. Can we refine our technology quicker than we use our technology to destroy ourselves?
If we find a brick wall we just need a harder head to go inside. Yeah, right. With this attitude we certainly will destroy each other sooner rather then later.
How can you know there is always next level? It always worked, it should work again - or does it? Yet again, read the word, "understanding" = "standing under". What is standing under the Earth core - there should be something, right?
Cause and effect doesn’t explain existence. But we have to understand there is no reason to believe there are any rules or laws that are causing this experience either.
It’s the lack of any rules or laws which allow experience.
If experience is possible, and we know it is, because we are all having an experience…. Then we can assume experiencing possible experiences is the basis for our reality.
Why does it seem that our world has laws and rules? That, we don’t know, and the only real answer may be … that it is possible.
Experience is possible and experiencing a world that seems ordered or to have rules is also possible.
We can say these things without making assumptions.
There may be an infinite set of possible experiences. By definition nothing outside that set can be experienced. Already we can see how possibilities can give rise to order.
There is everything (include nothing).
might experience help explain why there is anything at all? can experience be intelligible, if not mathematically then by language or other way?
why not?
Life, existence, truth is a forever unfolding process in time, of the unknown becoming known, a process of revelation of a higher intelligence through mankind, seeking to know itself.
Hmm.....I'm partial to Hegel .
He goes for the BIG theory . ! One that explains EVERYTHING ..
There's something admirable about that.
The laws are only descriptions of what happens, they have no causal power in themselves. You can not have laws without the material acting. So it is circular reasoning to say the laws create the material and also act on them. Something has to cause the processes to come into existence to create the material so that we may then use math to figure out what what we call "laws".
Some things are beyond human comprehension.
I find that if someone says "blah blah blah blah blah" instead of listing examples or adding to their point, that they don't really have anything to say that I want to hear
Nice to speculate but there is no answer we humans will ever understand.
Why is it this way and not another way? - the question of contingency - is an excellent question, but it’s not the same as that of why there is anything instead of Nothing. It’s anti-parallel, because it starts from the standpoint that it IS. I think the question of what’s even meant by “nothing” is crucial to the latter, but it’s infinitely subtle and invites a never-ending series of reframes. The best explanation I’ve got is that Nothingness, in its most fundamental sense, is Desire - a primordial, ontogenic, underpinning desire, which “chooses” metaphysical modalities of Universal Productivity. It’s very closely relatedto questions like “why did God create the world?” except it’s devoid of all possible modes of Being God, which also represent possible, metaphysical choices. If Absolute Nothingness IS Desire, I relate to it as a foundational choice to initiate a reality from mathematical origins.
You want to know more to be closer to Truth?? Watch this short Video:
ruclips.net/video/l1vBXFhseMk/видео.html
In God of war Ragnarok there were some riddles: what becomes greater the more you take away?
Desire, darkness, a hole? ..the answer was 'hole'.
A finite experience desire is apt, but concerning the Primordial Cause, how could there ever have been desire, as there is no other next to God to satiate such a desire; nor is there a greater than the 'Good' even to cause desire. Because God is ONE there is no duality such as desire here. Moreover is 'nothingness' even a thing, not a thing or non being? If nothingness is to be preconceived, there must then be some place which contains this 'nothingness', as nothingness is not a place or circumscription, or even a thing. When I think of nothingness, there can be no such thing, for 'nothing' itself is not a 'thing' that would even or ever desire, because desire is a thing that something lacks, so desire couldn't be equated to or connote to 'nothingness'. Nor could there ever have been nothing because of the 'ONE'. I consider nothingness to be fallacy.
Most here do not respect Metaphysics, I do. It is hard work. I enjoyed your comment and look forward to seeing more from you.
-- a fellow friend of Metaphysic's
Contingency is tricky because in one sense only certain physical transformations are possible so they have to be that way. Other physical transformations are impossible so they are can never be actualized. The Cosmos the space of all possibilities and impossibilities. There is cosmological landscape that contains all possible reality that are equally real and all virtual realities that pop into existence than dissolve in about 10^-43s.
Desire is a function of neural networks consequent on evolution by natural selection, not something that is embedded in the universe. Theists always appear to make this same mistake of trying to put us at the centre of the universe.
@@S3RAVA3LM One way of thinking about this that might help open it up is to try to think about “Nothingness” like “the vacuum of empty space”. It’s sort of like how if you put your hand up to the hose of a vacuum cleaner, it sucks your hand into it. The void spontaneously “sucks” metaphysical ideas into it: that’s the sense in which it would be ontological Desire. A part of what I like about it is that it sidesteps the complications that a God would entail. If we build a metaphysics around “God”, we are subbing in a positive entity to explain the presence of the Universe. We could suppose that God was invented by another God, but this opens up an infinite regress. If the question we’re trying to answer is why there is anything at all instead of just Nothing, we can’t fall back on a Being to create it without needing to explain why that Being exists too.
What if we turned the question around? Why should there be nothing? Nothing to me is an abstract state from which no events can ever emerge. The universe emerged so in that sense I'm not even sure 'nothing' exists or CAN exist
Yep . That’s what I think . I developed the theory smoking weed and years later , no longer smoking weed, I can’t think of a better way of looking at the “why is the something, rather than nothing “ question.
Going around asking questions that have no answer…
"Why these laws of nature?"
Like the fish in the fish tank asking why are there these laws of water?
Our ancestors were fishes
nothing as infinitesimal time? zero - point dimension of time?
We think we know many self-subsistent things that have a beginning, then marvel that the Universe doesn't have one, when in fact we know of no such thing.
There is one fact, and it's brute, and we have nothing to compare it to.
We can imagine nothingness being eternal, so can we imagine its fluctuation with negative and positive energy to be eternal as well? That's a jump, I admit, but one from something that we can imagine being eternal, which is something....
The eternal instability of zero energy
Kuhn around the 4:30 to 4:44 mark makes a key observation; “It has to have a self-causation. It has to say this is the only way but now it has also the power to bring itself into existence. It seems ridiculous”..... Now look up John 1:1-3. Two thousand years ago this author was inspired to write that before the universe existed there was “the Word.” No one understood that “the Word” includes all the laws of physics. The author says that without this Word, nothing was made (which would including space and time). This author is saying the same thing all our physicists are saying today. John 1:1-3 is pointing to the Big Bang and everything existing because of the laws of physics that God pronounced. The universe isn’t an accident. There is meaning to life.
How does it say it in Taoism.. That we should not study "the unlimited" with "the limited", not sure I said just right but the implications are recognized.... Or in this material world how could as the same as a goldfish in an aquarium can never understand the question of what is outside the glass nor how is there something outside glass, rather we may should only consider the movement and the requirements of food to eat and resist predictors....that is not say not to question the conscience aware we have even limited but more aware than a goldfish.....
This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." - Sir Isaac Newton
I miss that mandatory telling at the beginning, when he woke up heavy sweating by this question
When he was 12