Why something rather than nothing?

  • Thread starter vectorcube
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In summary: Not interested in what Russell thinks, but it is not a "diatribe". Most people say "diatribe" when they know they lost the argument already. It is a argument that Russell makes that you are not making. The argument is that there is a state of affair that is not determined by language. This is the same argument that Quine and Putnam makes. If you don` t know this argument, then you are not a philosopher, and there is no reason to talk to you.The argument is that there is a state of affair that is not determined by language. This is the same argument that Quine and Putnam makes. If you don` t know this argument, then you are not a philosopher
  • #246
GeorgCantor said:
You could be religious without belonging to any particular religious dogma.

I agree.
 
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  • #247
vectorcube said:
Why not? The general form is first explicated by the philosopher Robert Nozick. Why don` t you ask him? Ops, his dead.





No. In my hypothesis, I never called existence brute fact. My hypothsis does assume existence of the world, and is a justified assumption, unless you want to doubt it. Do you?





Brute fact has a technical meaning in philosophy.

X is a brute fact if and only if 1. X is contingent, and 2. It is not entailed by other facts.

2 is not completely precise, because i don` t want to get into all the technical stuff here.
The basic idea is that X is the effect, or result of some other facts. That is to say, There is not facts q, such that q implies the existence of X.

"See no big words either, other than "ontological". Was that too big for you?"
What are you talking about? It is tiny!

Now for X to be brute fact there should another fact to prove it.Now,for the existence of the other fact which proves the fact X,it needs to be a fact too.So,where this cycle stars..is where it ends.
 
  • #248
GeorgCantor said:
You could be religious without belonging to any particular religious dogma.




3. (adj) religious:
scrupulously faithful or exact; strict
 
  • #249
GeorgCantor said:
Without a valid theory on how a wavefunction becomes something, there isn't going to be any progress. From a philosophical perspective, the wave function seems to be transcending the space-time bound as a more fundamental ontological explanation for our observations. The real problem we have here is the problem of mind and consciousness and how wavefunctions become observable matter particles. The answer to the OP is going to range from - the something is a branching actuality in a multiverse of possible outcomes to extreme theories of minds creating actualities. So the OP is not even a philosophical question, as it presupposes the existence of knowledge that isn't available. This, imo, is the border between philosophy and religion and sadly the important questions still seem to lie deep into the domain of religion and faith.

There is also the idea that existence depends upon knowlegde being incomplete. That is, total information would be the same de facto as "nothing." Maybe then, the paradox is an essential feature of existence itself.
 

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