Why is there something rather than nothing?
I would like to know your answers with your own words, without quoting or reciting other authors please.
Il n’y-a pas de hors-texte.
This topic (and no offense to 4tune, because she/he is far from the first person in philosophy to raise it) is rubbish.
We can’t coneptualise an empty universe, nor do we have any structured way of talking about it.
Language is born entirely from experience with things. Empty universes are beyond the bounds of language.
We think and reason in language too. Only fools get involved with trying to reason about stuff that is out of the bounds of thier understanding.
Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to
care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a
figure: I am better than thou art now; I am a fool,
thou art nothing.
- The Fool in Lear.
Because otherwise it would be impossible to ask such a question.
I’m not sure about that. I think things and say them without necessarily knowing what language I’ve said it in; the concept seems more basic than the language rather than vice versa. And animals seem to think and reason too.
I am not entirely convinced by your arguments. You propose that we can’t talk about something that we have no experience of, because it doesn’t exist. We need only one example to counter this argument. I can talk about my unborn child, yet he or she doesn’t exist.
To Only_Humean:
I get what you’re saying, but I didn’t necessarily mean English (or any other communicative language).
Systems - thats the key. Without language, our thoughts would be random experiences detached from one another. But in our minds, meaning is added to perceptions and experiences. We systemise them. For example, I saw a coke can yesterday. I remember it because it was outside my front door. Now, as a raw perception, that was just an image. I could describe the picture in my mind simply by describing its colour and appearence. But - my mind instantly encodes this picture in to language. Although my eye sees only colours, in my mind the thought contains coke cans, tiles, even an elevator. What, as a perception, was a meaningless arrangement of light and colour has thus become a thought. And in becoming thought, it has become language - it now has meaning. The mind confers many layers of language over a single perception - that it occured on tuesday, for example, that it was unusual, that it led to me cleaning it away.
Without this encoding process, though, the thought would be nothing at all. One spacial arrangement of colours would be no different to another spacial arrangement of colours, one sound no different to another. Language is meaning, they are the same thing.
I call this language. Perhaps someone else may call it something else. It doesn’t matter - whatever it is, it comes only from experience. We still can’t think about things outside of our own experience.
That’s not quite what I proposed. I didn’t say that we can’t talk about anything that doesn’t exist. What I said was that we can’t talk about something that we can’t conceptualise.
We can imagine new things. But we only do this based on our previous experiences. How do you know what a baby is? How do you know what it means to be born? You know because of experiences (of many different types) that you have had with these things. Because of your experiences, you can easily conceptualise a new child.
At the end of the day, we only have access to knowledge of things that we experience.
The shocking thing is - I am not even talking about empty universes now.
Ideas precede language.
People were aware of the idea of beauty, before they could conceptualise it. Think of the first pieces of art - cave drawings, statues and so forth.
Did they not have language then?
I think we should not be afraid of “I don’t know”.
Agreed.
Struggle is another name of life.
Because the lenses with which you are perceiving see something. It is as simple as that.
Now change those lenses, and you may see nothing.
Yet again, change those lenses to lenses which are not easy to find and you may see both and everything.
There isn’t.
The total energy in the universe is zero.
brevel _ monkey’s take on this isn’t perfect, it’s just exactly right.
…and language shapes ideas.
On what grounds do you base this assertion? We were aware of beauty before conceptualization? How do you figure?
There is no universal “beauty”, and nothing can be considered beautiful without having been perceived by a human being. Is “beautiful” not just a label that we apply to aesthetics that seem appealing to us? People were aware of physical and mental feelings of pleasure, indifference, and pain/distress because of experience in the real world. We learn to recognize these sensations and apply them to what we experience.
observation + pleasure = “beauty”
experience + pleasure = “fun”
observation + distress = “ugly”
experience + distress = “work”
indifference, any way you slice it, generally = indifference (or “tolerance”)
Interpretation, representation - sure. But how can you possibly ‘know’, or say, that the artists were considering the notion of “beauty” at the time? Maybe one of the artists thought he was great and that he produced “beauty”, however it is just as likely that one of the artists could have thought his work was awful and unappealing. Perhaps they weren’t means of aesthetic pleasure/joy, but more a means of documentation or record keeping. We know well enough that people do not always create art for the sake of “beauty”, but also - and arguably a majority of the time - for utility.
An idea I had is that nothingness exists as potential. That would imply that nothingness does exist (paradox) but that it is formless randomness…there is nothing to point at or measure… until it has become something.
Yep. That’s about it … but before asking a question about anything you first have to have knowledge of it. Questions aren’t born from nothing. Questions don’t arise about things there is no knowledge of.
It slightly intriguing being that, when the brain is developed, there is such an extensive capacity to conceive and retain knowledge. We have all the hardware and the capacity, which in itself is amazing. Is there a natural demand from within a person to form a question prior to knowledge and the ability to think? Experiences themselves don’t do the conceiving. Interpreting does. Interpretation is of things outside done in conjunction with knowledge given of the things.
You say this from the standpoint of having experienced something new to you from nothing there before. You understand potentiality materializing into something. If you had not gone through all of this you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
i want to say that you are not true men i am the true man and this must be said because time is for truth, and the females in truth reality life you are should benefit the truth at least you can be productive on something positive there by being positively true yourselves as livings free conscious realities
self awareness is the absolute positive truth revealing certainty of void being positive existing and that absolute positive truth generate another truth out of certainty life asserting certainty of living freedom by loving itself superiority while being it objectively real for its absolute reality extensions while getting always to live of superiority drives it includes to realize then too
so nothing dont exist in the sense of nothing being aware of itself as nothing was what is existing that is the minimum that asserted existance of self freedom starting to live of certainty existance truth geniun effects of clarifications and positive results statistically inert
and the maximum was what i am talking about being a true man, that take the adventure on his shoulders for risking his life in all absolute superior realisations lives from that certainty facts positive always resolutions of existance
loving evolutions in superior realities is knowing risking deceptions of evolutions but never risking what is already an absolute truth of existance certainty freedom awareness fact, so the maximum it could loose the drive for superiority always but never itself existance life realities
that what explain in truth the reality of men and women divisions, and that is how women bodies could be in depth of truth closer to true man and men closer to true woman
truth is never in forms living since it is infinite character to finites ones and that is why gods proceed by opposites always meaning to protect truth itself realities definitions above the reality of all creations reality absolute whole
so the woman self living is the conscious free entity that enjoy the incomes of certainties within itself reality, developping character of the positive overall result in everyday incomes natural certainty clarification results
and the man self living is the free conscious entity that enjoy to move outside of all incomes selves realities to live as a free conscious truly move from the abstraction of certainty knowledge for its best reality of its conscious positive hint to its superiority possible reality justification to do,
so woman as true is the living self from certainty as a source of its joys realisations as real livings
and man as true is the living self from creating himself of being the conscious freedom source existance life
so yes in truth man is absolutely superior to woman self living means but only when it is true man as absolutely independant of incomes certainties and moving realistically for being the source of himself most positive reality
you are so proud of some senses you reach to live as pretending being self independant positive livings experiences while it is all against truth from the roots of its drives
living experience from risking its own self existance is clearly meaning opposition to truth existance certainty, as the base of the sense of life by being against the source of existance consciousness freedom certainty
being against yourself source as the source of your joy being independant is the assertion of being evil character self definitely
man is superior to woman when it risks for more positive free reality proof being living but from positive certainty reality that is definitely prooved already as absolute source, and never from attacking the alphabet of it being existing in the begining