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Why does anything exist?

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Re: Why does anything exist?

#91

Post by packetlost »

triyambakam wrote: post #86

> The religious person is left with a mystery which is no less than the mystery with which science leaves us As a Hindu I find this baffling. For the Hindu there is a consistency across science and religion, and sometimes the line between the two isn't clear. They work together harmoniously to form my worldview. Based on the cursory information I have about the author's background, I am assuming he was exposed to Wes…

Assigning a personification to a concept is a common theme among many religions throughout the world. To that end, Christianity and those based on it are more of an outlier than the norm.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#92

Post by tablespoon »

humanistbot wrote: post #3

I liked the table comparing many disciplines' default instance of nothing: Physics: No energy: the vacuum Geometry: No dimensionality: a point Set theory: No elements: the empty set Arithmetic: No magnitude: zero Information theory: No information: zero bits Then they ask: "There is an unlimited number of possible theoretical systems. Does this mean there are also unlimited conceptions of nothing?"

> I liked the table comparing many disciplines' default instance of nothing:

> Physics: No energy: the vacuum

And not being aware of the difference can lead one to dumbly misunderstand the question with confidence (e.g. some physicist explaining how the universe could have arisen out of "nothing," when they're really explaining how it could have arisen out of a vacuum, which metaphysically is definitely a something).

Re: Why does anything exist?

#93

Post by trebbble »

tshaddox wrote: post #58
trebbble wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like an appeal to the divine, in that it doesn't explain anything but does push the question up a level. "Why does something exist?" "God did it." "Uh, ok, why does God exist?" "Dunno, just does." "Why does something exist?" "The set of all possible wave states exists and behaves such-and-such way" "OK, but why does that exist and why does it do that?" "Dunno, just does". <- Ditto.

The only thing problematic about “appeals to the divine” or other explanations that “push the question up a level” is if part of the explanation is the prohibition of “where did that thing come from?” or “why is it this way and not some other way?” But pushing things up a level is actually the only option we have for good explanations. For any explanation about anything whatsoever, you should always be able to ask “w…

True if the level you shift it up to has some further explanatory value and/or can be demonstrated or proven in some fashion. If it's just "well, it might be this thing that we can't prove" then, until you've turned that notion into something you can test or at least support with observations, it's just "god did it".

I think "there's something rather than nothing because the set of all possible waves exists... like, somewhere" is roughly identical to "god did it", as opposed to, say, a hypothesis that things fall and planets orbit due to a universal force that causes matter to attract other matter, even if both just prompt another "why?" You can go do stuff with the latter—not so much with the former, which is more of a dodge than even a partial explanation.

A good test might be whether you can apply the answer to any "why?" that lacks an existing answer, with exactly the same utility and validity in every case. Take the example of the question suggested by the explanation of universal gravitation:

"OK, why does gravity exist, then?"

"God did it / that's just what our little corner of the set of all possible waves happens to look like"

There's simply no specificity to them, and they amount to "just because".

Re: Why does anything exist?

#94

Post by caloriesdont »

cpr wrote: post #87
caloriesdont wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Specifically, if the universe is everything that there ever is or ever will be, how can it be contingent upon something external to itself? It would be contingent upon a necessary foundation within the universe. So there is one specific part in the universe that is necessary, and everything else around that is contingent.

It can't be contingent on something necessary within itself. Within means being part of the contingency.

Hmm, I don't see the problem -

Everything in the universe is contingent, except for one thing which is necessary. Everything relies on that necessary foundation.

What's the issue?

Re: Why does anything exist?

#95

Post by nathan_compton »

whoisjuan wrote: post #88
nathan_compton wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with this attitude is what even are you talking about? Suppose we "abandon our rational mind" for a moment and sojourn into the irrational. How the heck are we supposed to take anything back from that experience and into the world of discourse? Presumably there is much more bullshit in the endless tracks of irrationality than truth and whatever mechanism by which we choose to carry ideas back clearly can't…

First, assuming that the universe is an absolute system doesn't mean we can't build models to interpret its nature through binary interpretations. In the same way that a map is not the territory, a mental model for the universe isn't the universe. So saying "abandon our rational mind" is just a rhetorical mechanism to establish that perhaps this is the wrong question, and we should reframe what we understand as absol…

I still don't really get it. Not all ideas which disagree with or go beyond the current best scientific models of the universe are considered non-scientific or esoteric (if this were the case scientific progress would be impossible).

How about this: state explicitly what strategies beyond empiricism, model building, ontology refinement, and epistemological reasoning you think can provide genuine verifiable insight about the world?

Re: Why does anything exist?

#97

Post by packetlost »

caloriesdont wrote: post #78
jawns wrote: post #59

If you like the question of "Why does anything exist?" then an obvious next question is: "What's stopping things from not existing?" In philosophy, there is a distinction between things that must be (they're called necessary) and things that may or may not be (they're called contingent). For instance, if we use the standard definition of a square, then every square you will ever encounter will necessarily have four s…

> our universe requires a "sustaining cause" (as with a picture on a TV set). Diving further into this, there's a hot debate about whether the universe does require a sustaining cause (the Existential Expiration thesis), or whether it can just exist unless something stops it from existing (Existential Inertia Thesis) Personally, I am inclined to think that things tend to keep existing unless something stops them from…

I personally think that time, and all dimensions (including the 3 that we typically thing of as "space") are simply caused by a few axioms: there is the concept of "something else" (that is, 1 != 0, there is at least 2 possibilities); there is "something" of which can we in at least 1 of those 2 possible states, but not both; there is something to a way in which the answer to the question of state can be known; there is cause -> effect. When taken to the infinite complexity, you end up with coalescing densities of state all of which cannot be simultaneously true and there fore

Re: Why does anything exist?

#98

Post by nathan_compton »

kcl wrote: post #76
nathan_compton wrote: post #49

This is a lot of ground to cover to get to what is, in my opinion, a very bizarre conclusion which is epistemologically extremely lugubrious: that all structures expressible mathematically also exist and we are (obviously) a subset of those structures. Frankly, this doesn't even feel like any kind of knowledge to me. Its operationally meaningless! In any case, I think the author has the cart before the horse: numbers…

> numbers (and other sorts of mathematics) do not pre-exist reality. Numbers are abstractions of regularities we see in nature. This is an open and ancient question. I don't suppose to have the answer. I will say, the case for mathematics pre-existing is stronger than what you refute here.

You're right, of course, that this is an open question. But the posted article saunters about the fields of an incredibly deep question by glibly asserting idealism about mathematical structures. It is an awfully weak foundation upon which to build an answer to such a fundamental question.

It is _at least_ plausible that numbers supervene upon existence and not the other way around, which makes the entire exercise in the article seem suspect in its presentation, at the very least.

Would you _really_ say that the case for mathematical idealism is that strong? The Philpapers survey seems to suggest philosophers are approximately evenly split on this question (idealists at 39%, nominalists at 38%).

Re: Why does anything exist?

#99

Post by andyjohnson0 »

caloriesdont wrote: post #94
cpr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be contingent on something necessary within itself. Within means being part of the contingency.

Hmm, I don't see the problem - Everything in the universe is contingent, except for one thing which is necessary. Everything relies on that necessary foundation. What's the issue?

> Everything in the universe is contingent, except for one thing which is necessary. Everything relies on that necessary foundation.

How do you know this?

Re: Why does anything exist?

#100

Post by jawns »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #81
jawns wrote: post #59

If you like the question of "Why does anything exist?" then an obvious next question is: "What's stopping things from not existing?" In philosophy, there is a distinction between things that must be (they're called necessary) and things that may or may not be (they're called contingent). For instance, if we use the standard definition of a square, then every square you will ever encounter will necessarily have four s…

Thank you for taking the time to write that and explain the concepts so clearly. How do you know that concepts/categories like "necessary" and "contingent" apply to the universe? Specifically, if the universe is everythibg that there ever is or ever will be, how can it be contingent upon something external to itself? Could it not be the case that there concepts come from a causality-based view of reality that may be…

I think "universe" is an ambiguous word that is not helpful when we talk about this stuff. Like, for instance, you've probably heard of multiverse theory, where there is not just one universe, but many. In which case, "universe" means the subset of physical reality that we are a part of. Maybe there are other universes that truly exist, but there's no door between ours and theirs.

So maybe we can more precisely talk about all of physical reality, regardless of whether they exist in our universe or an alternative universe, or a realm that exists outside of the universe but influences or produces the material of the universe. Clearly, that includes all material things themselves, but might also encompass the non-material but very real and observable physical laws that govern how reality operates.

How can there be something outside of that physical reality? Well ... the Greeks had a word for that: meta-physics. And generally, when it is posited that something necessary exists (whether it be God or something else), that necessary thing exists metaphysically. So yes, as you are suggesting, a distinction does need to be made between physical reality and metaphysical reality for it to make sense that the universe (comprising only physical reality) is contingent.

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