Ultimate question: Why anything at all?

apeiron

I agree - for quite different reasons most probably - that the idea of something arising from nothing is absurd. But that is a subtly different question from the OP.

The question here is about the possibility of there being just nothing - period. Now we know that isn't in fact the case. But was it ever even an honest possibility?

How can logic rule that out? Logic may rule out the kind of nothingness that spawns a somethingness, but it does not appear to rule out a nothingness of the kind that spawns...nothing.

This seems a rather coherent and self-consistent concept of nothingness - more so than the fecund kind. And the OP is about why we actually do have something rather than that kind of nothingness.

Albuquerque

It seams to me that we must assume such kind of nothingness is possible in the first place and yet we don´t have any good reason to believe so...on its own premiss nothingness cannot be time dependent thus it does not follow a moment from where it can transit to something without contradicting its own conceptual terms...

(I apologise for my far from bright English which is not my first language)

apeiron

They are still two separate arguments. In one, the debate is whether nothingness is itself a true possibility. In the other, the debate is whether nothingness actually existed (for a while, until something arose).

So in considering nothingness as a possibility, we can agree it must have no properties at all - no time, no space. It is not even an empty world.

And there is where the probability argument in fact slips up. It depends on some firm notion of countable worlds to get off the ground. And true nothingness could have nothing that smacks of a worldliness, such as change or development - any kind of temporal progression.

True nothingness, by its definition could never spawn an actual world. So the existence of something proves that there was never "a time of nothing". And yet is still seems an active possibility. There could still have been a nothing (as an alternative to our existence and how it came about).

To finally eliminate nothingness as even a possibility, further work is needed. We have to have an argument which says our world came about through this process, and logically this is the only kind of origin it could have had. And look, as the "complementary other" to existence, it exhausts all other possibilities. There is now no room for nothingness even as a logical possibility.

In other words, we employ the usual logic of metaphysical dichotomies.

Nothing vs something is a very weak kind of dichotomy. For the reasons discussed, it does not really work as the terms are not mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. No-thing is a simple negation, based on trying to subtract away all things (or actually, just the "some" that are taken to exist). And as you point out, we cannot finally subtract away time or space, or at least the potential for change, the potential for stability too, in any intelligible way. We can subtract to create an empty world, but not a non-world.

What we need is the kind of complex negation that is a strong dichotomy. In which the two polar alternatives cover every possibility and are definitely related by their very lack of relation - it is the total metaphysical exclusivity that exhausts the need for any further consideration of other possibilities.

As I said earlier in the thread, this leads us to some form of the arguments of Anaximander, Aristotle, Hegel and Peirce. Where what are opposed are vagueness and crispness, replacing the weaker thesis and antithesis of nothing and something.

The vague is a notion of a fundamental state that admits to development - the vague can always become something. As a state of pure potential, it is not a nothing (that is a possibility it excludes). But it is also as near a nothing as possible. Likewise, a pure potential can become anything. So it is also as near an everythingness as possible. It is an infinity of degrees of freedom as yet unconstrained, but by the same token, unformed.

Somethingness then becomes the emergence of constraints, of limits, of form. And the cause of this emergence employs all four of Aristotle's causes (whereas the "something from nothing" kinds of argument usually just appeal to some kind of local effective cause - a triggering event).

With the notion of vagueness, we can not only subtract away all things, we can also dissolve away any idea of space and time - so get rid of both the contents and the container to have less than an "empty world".

All sorts of things flow from this view. For instance, when now asking the question "why anything", the only alternative is that things might have remained forever vague. But this is illogical, forbidden, because constraints could also exist. The question can now be answered in terms of the inevitabilty of constraints.

Of course, you still have to construct that model. And people like Peirce, or Geoffrey Chew with his bootstrap approach to particle physics, have attempted such models. But at least the metaphysics gives a clear idea of what the model needs to be about - the development of global systems constraints.

So the Why Anything? argument is useful because it reveals the inadequacy of nothingness as a global concept (no-things can only be localised particulars of some crisply actual world). And even of effective causes as the way to get everything started (again, effective causes are only local and particular).

Maui

Great post!

This is a murky area and probably a very difficult question but have you thought on ways to introduce time in this model, especially after SR and its blockworld view(the blockworld view seems to nullify all attempts at understanding).

bohm2

But isn't a relational or antisubstantivalist interpretation of spacetime capable of doing just that? I thought Mach favoured this approach but that's not important:

de Broglie waves as the “Bridge of Becoming” between quantum theory and relativity
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1107/1107.1678.pdf

apeiron

Yes, indeed that is something I've put a lot of effort into. But it would have to have its own thread.

Suffice to say, I think a thermodynamic approach to time is the key - seeing it as a gradient of change which gets dissipated. So a phase transition model in which we go from one kind of equilbrium (the instability of vagueness) to the more stable one (of a heat death universe).

There is a lot of thinking in this direction. For example, Prigogine's The End of Certainty is a stimulating read here. As the Nobellist father of dissipative structure theory, that should be no surprise.

But you also have loop quantum gravity theorists going in the same direction, because they must also make time (and space) emerge from vagueness (their quantum foam). And people like Rovelli are coming out with thermal time models.

So there is certainly a literature to ground speculation here.

SR leads to a blockworld in the same way that QM leads to MWI. They are models that have no constraints to break their internal symmetries. Yet clearly, the world as we experience it is not like these models. Those claimed symmetries are in fact broken.

This does not falsify SR or QM - so long as the models do not make a claim to be complete. The something missing (the further contraints) may get put in by hand, but it is not that difficult in practice to do that. So the models don't get us into trouble. SR and QM are fine in themselves.

However, when doing metaphysics, that is when we have to talk about what the models omit, as well as what they include, and so what kinds of further deductions would be valid.

Blockworld is one of the false pathways of thought that arise if you "believe" some particular model too religiously. At least, IMO.

apeiron

Yes it should. That is what I said about loop approaches - they presume some kind of vagueness as their ground. The unoriented roil of a spin-foam, or whatever. Then space and time emerge from this via the evolution of constraints - a network of concrete relationships that solidify the generality of possibility into something specific and actual, with a definite history, and so a definite future.

This is also Peircean. It is all about self-creation via relationships. Contraints must arise as the "sum over histories" or least mean path. The least action principle is also the basis of dissipative structure theory and so a thermodynamic approach.

So Mach, Peirce, Rovelli, Chew. Many see the essential story. But science picks the low hanging fruit first (a further example of the least action principle, hey? ).

Maui

Philosophically, I agree somewhat with your point, that it's always good to keep an open-mind and be aware that we are discussing models, yet, when discussing reality we only have our models to rest upon(it's been a tradition to regard everything else as empty talk). Yet, if we don't believe what they strongly suggest, it would seem that absolutely everyone on PF is talking mumbo-jumbo when they refer to reality. There is some truth, as far as it's attainable, that reality is relative to a frame of reference, as evidenced by clocks on the satellites orbiting the Earth and the experiments run at CERN which rely on the veracity of SR. So even if truths don't exist, it's more of a fact that reality is relative(and time is relative which lead to a blockworld), than it's a fact that reality is split at every quantum interaction(this is more of phantasy than a fact). I am far from dogmatic on it, but i'd put my money on the blockworld than on MWI any day of the week(even if it doesn't tell the whole story because no model is complete).

Time holds the key to most troubles in fundamental physics(that's Smolin's opinion in "The trouble with physics", as my own opinion is hardly worth much)

Albuquerque

As a layman I confess to be strongly stuck with the hard deterministic approach and with the concept of a block Universe as far as what I do understand these concepts intend to refer to which in itself is formally vague...
It follows I have trouble in conceptualising vagueness in any other way then the one who merely reports to the epistemological problem...thus vague for me refers to the temporary lack of awareness on the decision making constrains or good reasons that I might have towards some goal or some form of inquiry and not so much as reporting to a state in itself...in that sense I see it more as an "illusory effect" upon consciousness then an actual thing with its own "property´s"...I have trouble in imagining a true random process in motion without any sort of precise constrains as I understand motion itself as a form of means to ends, functions to systems and can´t conceive on any form of "behaviour" as being truly loose, although I wilfully admit complexity might strongly build that impression...
In the face of an interacting "indecision effect" from a system to another which is "alien" to its nature I am conceptually grounded with imagining lack of process/motion rather then an open ended form of process with no guidance...I don´t even know what it means motion with no guidance...as I am left wondering, what propels it ("its beingness") ? what vector goes nowhere in particular, or aims no goal ?
...again I hope the language barrier and the layman approach on the problem are not strong enough to prevent a fruitful exchange of ideas on such a hard problem...

Regards>Albuquerque

Albuquerque

Post Scriptum -
...a block multiverse where all possibility´s of being are deterministically covered does not require any kind of intelligent designer with a volitional intention to justify the process of change...in fact "intention" and "volition" as I understand them, rather refer to the search for completion (first person perspective) then being the result of completion (holistic perspective, Being with no mind)...thus as I see it the need for "minds" is more the product of incomplete beings unfolding their process of completion then a final process where awareness is required...hope that settles the problem raised above !

Albuquerque

...one interesting exercise is to relate what has been said with Godel´s incompleteness as an argument against the mind of all minds (and any kind of mind for that purpose) who cannot justify its own volition or wilful intentional process from within itself, thus ending up being more then an argument just against computation or mathematics but also against free will, against conscience and against Gods at large...

bohm2

I wouldn’t put my money on either model. Until we can answer such questions as below:

THE MYSTERIES OF NATURE: HOW DEEPLY HIDDEN?
The journal of Philosophy, April 2009. P.181.

Unfortunately we will likely never have the answers to such questions. One can’t expect much from a cognitively-limited, arrogant, linguistic ground chimp like ourselves.

Edit: I'm starting to hate reading/writing my posts. They're too pessimistic/negative/misanthropic. I need to change my attitude.

Albuquerque

...if anything my case is not against what has been labelled as naive realism but against minds as independent self justified willing systems...if minds cannot justify their own circumstances by which they would came to be what they are and thus through it the product of their will, then it reasons their so said free willing comes as an illusion from the process by which they circumstance is brought to existence in the specific way it is brought up...I decompose mind as an independent volitional entity and reduce it to a reactive deterministic necessary interacting process from reality with reality itself, whatever is reality..."subjectivity" in here translates to local perspectivism, and "observer" to am interacting system within the System who acknowledges and processes information accordingly with the conditions that such System provides, and which itself could not chose...a World without a mind, which cannot reason itself, or to repeat itself within itself...

apeiron

LOL, yes, be a glass half full guy instead.

The complaint in your extract is that we are just modellers of reality. Even our perceptions, our impressions, our measurements, are shaped by our ideas, our theories. We are cut off from the source of our impressions~ideas in some radical way.

But you can flip this around and see it as the crucial fact. It is because we are epistemically separated from reality that we can model it! You have to have mental distance to be able to imagine that reality could be other than what it appears, and thus see it more truly for what it is.

All this "ground chimp" stuff misses the glorious fact that our language ability does create a completely new realm of modelling for us. A chimp has to take its reality as brute fact. We get to stand back and wonder at it. Consider the other possibilities that put our actuality in its full context.

Our separation from reality is not an error to be deplored but a fortunate development that we should exploit to the full.

Deveno

as a direct consequence of reading this thread, i started looking about for related stuff, which lead me to various places.

one of those places was the introduction to a book called "The Master and his Emissary." while i have not read it in depth, it occurs to me that there is a partial answer of sorts to bohm2's pessimism, which is:

only half of our brain is concerned with the "dissection" of reality into a self-consistent model. the other half sees things on a more holistic level, is perfectly happy with ambiguity, and non-linguistic apprehension. the resolution of reality into its constituent parts, can only take us so far, either our devices cannot extend our senses far enough, or our ability to logically deconstruct can only produce models which "make sense" to us. the nature of the beast is probably beyond such a reductionist approach, but that doesn't leave us with nothing. we have our intuitions, and our imaginations with which to transcend such limitations.

if i understand the implications of this (and perhaps i do not), it means that we have an entire set of separate tools with which to select the theories our analysis devises. we can leverage our innate "dualness" to our advantage. one sees this in the joy of discovery the experimentalist makes: his mind conjures up a possible reality, and his experience either validates this, or invalidates this. we can "dissassociate" but we can also "connect", and the very nature we have allows us to do either/or.

it may be that we never know exactly "why" we are here. but i believe we may yet gain some insight into "how". and this, in itself, will be a satisfaction of sorts, because we know how deeply interrelated form and function are.

there is good reason, given how fruitful it has been, to regard the "inside" and "outside" of "us" as distinct, it gives us a flexibility in reacting to our world that many creatures simply do not have. but i feel we should not forget, that in many ways, this is our own construct, a way we seek to understand, and as such, is somewhat less than the totality of what is actually transpiring. we are the observed, as well as the observers, such a distinction is (for lack of a better word) theoretical.

apeiron's conception of "the vague" sounds very reminiscent to me of the zen concept of the void: it is not something, it is not nothing, everything exists "in" it, but not like the wall i frequently bang my head against. it is what you get when you lose the quality of distinction, which (the act of distinguishing is what i am referring to) creates (amongst other things) dualities, logical structures, and (more pertinently for us) the sense of identity.

i consider it likely that this "vague" is, and always has been with us, that time itself, is a kind of "something" like space and sub-atomic particles are. mathematically, it's sort of like the null set: the null set doesn't have any members (so it's unique), but on the other hand, has every single property and quality that anything can possibly have. the only thing you need to get from the null set to something that has some definite quality is..."not". you draw a line, a boundary, and then you have opposition. you divide an indivisible whole, and then many things are possible. as soon as we put a bracket around the null set, like so:

{Ø}, then boom! out comes most of mathematics. if the universe (multi-verse) is indeed some sort of structure which has discernable underlying principles (a view espoused by max tegmark, for example, but which certainly has its detractors), then this is all you need to "explain" all this stuff going on around us. one tiny pair of brackets. one slash. and then there was two.

and such an event(?) could certainly rapidly seek to organize itself, as a dynamical system. sort of like a match burning, drawing on context (available energy) until its all used up (heat death). if this is true (and who knows, i could be very wrong), and humanity survives long enough, we will probably witness some fantastic acts of creation going on in the galaxies around us. should be quite a show.

apeiron

All early attempts at metaphysics started with the idea of the vague forming itself dichotomously to become the crisply something. So you find it in both East and West thought circa 6th century BC. It is there in the I Ching, Taoism and Buddhism (dependent co-arising). Zen is a later echo.

To the first thinkers, this was the obvious way realities develop. But it was the Christian tradition in particular that invented the idea of "something from nothing", creation ab initio. And then modern science got going with the rediscovery of atomist philosophy - a doctrine also dependent on the idea of nothingness, of a true void.

We can say that the original conception of nature was organic - realities developed from vague states of potential by a dichotomous separation into complementary definite things. And the modern conception is mechanical - realities are manufacture by construction, the lumping of parts into arrangements that make functional wholes.

It is this mechanical view that McGilchrist bemoans as "left brain thinking".

And he is sort of right. The brain itself has an organic logic. Relax your mind (as in meditation) and it goes vague. It is not a nothingness but a state of humming potential. Then use your mind and it becomes brightly about something when it separates experience into figure and ground, event and context. There is the something we are definitely attending, and the penumbra of all that situates it, gives it meaning - because it has with equal definiteness been suppressed.

And this dichotomous style of processing is basic to brain architecture. The left/right divide is just one of them.

So material reality, our minds, and our logic, can all work the same way - organically. But the Western tradition has chosen a mechanical conception of all three instead. It kind of works. It is certainly simpler. But ultimately it is a frustrating and limiting view of life - McGilchrist's argument.

bohm2

I don't think the concept of "vagueness" really helps. It seems one could still ask "Why vagueness rather than nothing"?