Ultimate question: Why anything at all?

apeiron

This is where Rescher would benefit from a more Peircean approach. If you are taking a developmental perspective, it is no problem for "laws" - globally general constraints - to emerge from vague and tentative beginnings.

Both laws and what they regulate develop jointly. Ultimately they are cut from the same cloth - the kind of absolute state of possibility that Peirce called vagueness.

Interesting paper, but Rickles kind of kills his own argument by citing Connes on the view that there is "primordial mathematical reality" out there which is separate from the "deductive tools" which exist in our heads.

So reality looks mathematical, rather than reality is mathematical. There may be a correspondence between the two, but it is epistemic, not ontic. And thus the way that the world takes on mathematical-looking form (ie: develops some set of laws, regularities or constraints) might be entirely different to the way humans reconstruct those forms (via a logico-deductive process).

And then the core of Rickles' argument is that he can imagine subtracting away all material objects so as to create an empty reality - a nothingness - but he can't imagine how to subtract away the existence of mathematical truths. They are always going to be there (well, somewhere) even in the absence of any thing. So a state of no-thing is impossible as an actuality.

But this has holes. If, as I argue, maths describes forms, and thus constraints, you don't subtract them away, you get rid of them by relaxing them. You remove by generalising (such as going from a geometric to a topological level of description).

An empty world - in the sense of one with all its possible local degrees of freedom definitely removed, all its contingent facts erased - is in fact in a highly constrained state. Indeed, infinitely constrained. We would be talking about everything being completely limited and so nothing actually occuring. But that would leave this "empty" world now also completely full of contraint.

Rickles' view is that it is trivial to subtract away local degrees of freedom, but impossible to subtract away mathematical forms. My argument is instead that the two aspects of existence are a yo-yo balance, and any effort to remove one gives you more of the other. It is for this reason that there is always something rather than nothing.

Relaxing constraints give you more degrees of freedom. Tightening constraints gives you less degrees of freedom.

So again, it is not that subtracting one is trivial and the other impossible which forbids the existence of nothingness, but the reciprocal causal relationship that constraints and degrees of freedom have with each other.

bohm2

I'm lost here also. As I see it, I think the major problem with Rickle's argument is the following statement:

"so long as we are willing to accept that reality is mathematical".

That’s a major problem especially for those who view mathematics as mental objects or believe that reality transcends mathematics (MarcoD). I always assumed that qualia/consciousness defies mathematical/formal description so the existence of such stuff seems to seriously raise doubts about whether mathematics can fully describe reality. There are some, however, who argue that this isn’t a major stumbling block because we have no way of knowing "what is like to be a mathematical structure", so maybe certain mathematical structures could have the intrinsic properties we associate with qualia/consciousness? I’m not sure I buy this argument.

Furthermore, maybe I’m misunderstanding but is Rickle’s point that there is no problem concerning Godel’s theorem, with respect to his position, valid? He seems to suggest all of the following:

1. Godel’s theorem does not tell us that there is any problem with mathematical truths per se; only that there is no algorithmic way of generating all such truths. We must distinguish truth and provability.
2. Furthermore, there’s a distinction between the tools (i.e. theories) we use to represent reality and the reality itself.
3. Godel’s incompleteness theorem applies to the former alone (theories). Indeed, this does impose a limitation on physics’ theoretical prowess in that if reality is a certain way (related to properties of arithmetic) then a complete account using any logico-mathematical representation will prove to be impossible. This is an epistemic limitation rather than a limitation imposed on reality.

But then he also suggests that for his argument to be valid one has to accept the view that:

4. Reality is mathematical.

Wouldn’t that imply that there is no difference between the tools (i.e. theories) and reality so that Godel’s incompleteness theorem would apply? Maybe I'm mistaken. I have trouble with these types of arguments.

Maui

That is a non-question... like most others. It's been known for a while now that everything is out of our immediate reach - consciouness, matter, time, space, spacetime... even causality which is the BASIS for ALL our knowledge has been shaken by modern theories like quantum mechanics. Then neuroscientists keep pressing that being conscious is an automatic and autonomous process, much like being asleep and dreaming and perceiving your decisions after the fact. Push hard enough and you cannot but see that we don't really understand anything, anything at all. Nothing "has really changed since Socrates and his famous "I know that i know nothing" unless you want to fool yourself into the common delusion(which falls down on its face upon closer examination)

epenguin

I will now give the explanation I thought of the last but one time this question was asked here, I think this happens roughly every three months, which is that if there were nothing there would be nothing to prevent there being something whereas if there is something there is something to prevent there being nothing.

bohm2

Wouldn't that lead to some type of regression? I still think Descarte's argument is pretty strong: "I think, I exist". That was a pretty simple argument and yet very profound. Unfortunately, beyond that, certainty in our knowledge seems pretty questionable. Unless, you are a Platonist, I guess?

Maui

Sure that's an oximoron but science isn't a scroll of truths. It's an endevor to help us get along.




"There is an experience of being" - that would be less questionable by the neuroscientists' lot than the "I" implied by Decartes which would seem a too loaded term to the current trend of approaching the consciousness topic.

I have a different opinion than the general stance of neurology, but on the other hand, i don't disagree with their stance entirely. I just don't think it's all there is to consciousness at all.

latter

yes but there is still the problem of there is something doing something before the universe.?
you are saying why is the system chosen over enough.but this is not the ultimate question because whatever it is that picks one over the other will itself be under scrutiny
infact what ever anyone trys to say is the start to everything it will inturn be asked why and where.you can never get to a start with out this problem occurring.
take god where did he come from this goes asking well where did that god that created that god come from .

Sefrez

I agree. It is as if our logic is simply just limited and things begin to fall apart at this level. There may be no way to answer this question (in our minds with our logic.) It seems to be able to be discussed and abstractly "answered" in some way, but it still never makes "real sense". At least it seems someone always has a new question - as it goes here.

Another place that logic falls apart, what did I absolutely just say? What does this mean? What are words when one just connects to another few - which intern connects to memories and understandings in my mind. What is my mind? See? It just continues.

Maui

Causality is still our number one foundation of knowledge, despite some recent questions about its universal validity. For some reason, nature has "chosen" to interact via virtual photons as mediators of the EM interaction(as far as we/i know) and there appears to be a something that initiates these interactions(something that has and acquires mass in relativistic settings and is thus different from light and photons). This is almost touching the subject of existence and the nature of existence and it seems obvious that if we lose causality, we'll lose the ability to say anything that seems meaningful about anything at all.

Edit: So perhaps we can reduce the "Ultimate question: Why anything at all?" to "Why charge?" Why do particle-like systems have the property called charge out of which the familiar casality arises? Would non-interacting "particles" be existing or would that be another form of existence(sounds a bit MWI-ish and we couldn't know either way). I guess the point is that it's not a settled question what the "anything" in the title really is and a solipsist might argue that the question is "Why me?".

qsa

I did not reply earlier b/c I did not get the notification. first, I will top you on the charge question. here is a post I made in reponse to Garret

Lets say you manage the three generations, would your theory answer these questions anytime soon.


1. all couplings values and their relations and origin. That includes computing the behavior at all energies (and distances-up to edge of the universe if there is one(CC)). and if there is a physical cut-off or not.

2. the theory must predict particles with their masses explained.Inculding light and its clear interaction picture with matter.

3. What is charge exactly and how does the value come about.

4. the origin of Spin and entanglment.

5. how do particles behave in flight, like the double slit experiment.

6. The real source of the effect of relativity. That is of course includes what is Space and time. and what is vacuum made of.

7. the relation between all of the above.

8. the origin and the fate of the universe or(universes)

But Most of all what is existance made of, if not a mathematical imperative.

But it is unfair to say we know nothing b/c we have models that do a good job as you know, but I do think as we make progress our models will become more exact and will reach an ontic stage. and all the people who work in the high end physics do blieve in that otherwise they would not spend their time, so I don't think that some of the smartest people on earth are deluding themselves. and the fact that you participate in PF atests to that.

Now, I will send you some material via PM, which is not suitable for disclosure here(rules), in the hope that it will give you a different prespective.

Galteeth

On a basic level the question "Why is there something rather then nothing?" ontologically entails the existence of something, as only if there is something is the question possible.

To me, this is the most satisfying answer.

bohm2

Some have argued that it isn’t “logically possible for there to be nothing at all”. Other disagree using this argument:

http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-conte...les_fqxi_2.pdf

Sefrez

That is kind of where I was headed in an earlier post of mine:
I don't necessarily disagree with that, but even if you were to take that stand, it still does not say that nothing is impossible. It just says that with our logic, nothing is impossible. Though, can that statement be made sense of?

Maui

How does my participation on PF attest that i have learned anything philosophically substantial about reality and the world? If anything, most people who come here realize that the world they recognize is either utterly incomprehensible or so bizarre that they may just go ahead and say - "Hey look, i am a flying elephant" instead. Show me 1 physicist that understands how the world works without employing voodoo, magic and phantasy and i'll apologize.




They are not, but you are. They are perfectly aware of what they don't know, hence why they don't come here too often to give lessons. What is there to discuss except a handful of utterly ridiculous propositions about the world we think we know?

As for the PM's - thank you, i'll have a look tonight, it's always good to have other viewpoints. The most aesthetically pleasing "model" as far as i can see is that of the hologram, as it retains locality and causality(i don't see a better way out of the Bell's theorem while retaining some sort of reality and keeping the the theory of evolution, and all the other knowledge, etc...), whereas giving us a strong sense of comprehension and a good deal of visualization and a possibility to have a world-view expressible in human language. It almost clicks for me, but there is likely an infinity of things i don't know and am not currently aware of, so this is only relevant as a philosophical consideration.

Galteeth

lol wut

Maui

Sorry, not you. I was talking about physicists(PhD's, Nobel Prize winners, etc.). Most lay people seem to intuitively understand how the world works
I guess you guys are smarter

I am not sure if netspeak is allowed here, but you could have a look at the respones it gets:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=netspeak

apeiron

As I replied in post #103, and as Rickles himself argues, MN can subtract away everything from a world, but that still leaves a world. So this approach is a dead-end.

Rickles says an empty world still contains mathematical truth. I don't think you have to get all Platonic to see this. If you cannot subtract away the spacetime points that make up this empty world, you are left with some kind of logical geometric structure. Enough to make concrete the notion of a manifold, of a topology.

Mathematics itself is just the model, the descriptive idea. But MN is left with the reality that would have to inspire that idea.

You can still ask what "nothing" would look like (my answer, a vagueness). And therefore can it logically exist. But you would have to create a mental image of it by some other means than subtracting away a set of local objects to leave an empty stage.