Something Instead of Nothing

Christopher Cokinos in Philosophy Now magazine

And yet would not the Bhudda be compelled to grasp this if he is to make any sense at all of all the other things he dispenses in the way of “wisdom”?

That’s the crux of it from my point of view. We have no access to the “final answer” yet we have no choice but to take our leaps to particular answers regarding actual existential interactions on this side of the grave.

Doesn’t that effectively cripple those answers ultimately? We propose them only because there is no alternative. But we can never assess them as any thing other than more or less educated guesses.

Or maybe not.

Last night on the Science Channel, they aired a documentary that just boggles the mind in regards to all of this: “The Battle Of the Dark Universe”.

sciencechannel.com/tv-shows … k-universe?

Here we are groping to understand something instead of nothing when it is estimated that only 5% of the known universe is actually within the reach of astrophysicists. The other 95% is composed of dark matter and dark energy. And they really [as of now] can’t explain them.

and you know, while this is certainly a curious question - where did it all come from, or was it always, or will it end, etc. - it’s not really the quest for an answer to these questions that drives the scientist and philosopher. rather it’s what an answer would imply that the scientist and philosopher is looking for. he thinks that if he is able to find a ‘creator’ (whatever that might be), he might be able to find some direction for his other, more pertinent questions; does this ‘creator’ want me to do something specifically and/or will what i do offend or appease this ‘creator’.

this indicates two rather intriguing existential problems; man doesn’t know what to do, and he can never quite grow out of his need for some authority (in religion, a father-figure on a cosmic scale).

now as a sport-theist, i like to put a spin on this traditional approach and suggest that if there were a ‘god’, it too would recognize these two rather embarrassing problems that man has and, to the extent that a ‘god’ would ‘want’ anything, wouldn’t want man to be troubled by such problems. or rather ‘it’ wouldn’t pay attention to those who do have such problems. i’d think that this ‘god’ would favor the bold and courageous… so much so that you might even imagine such a person being a living antithesis to everything hitherto held in high esteem by the prevailing major religions. who would have thunk it; the ‘antichrist’ as the personification of divinity?

now there is a long line of reasoning behind this proposal… reasoning that reveals the various ‘collisions’ between logic and such things as the ontological, cosmological, intelligent design, and argument from evil arguments. you might say that god is hiding behind these things, producing them for the purpose of being refuted by those intelligent enough to recognize them as illogical, and bold and courageous enough to take these conclusions to there greatest extreme. to liberate themselves of all restrictions placed on them by such doctrinal puzzles… puzzles which were designed to be solved only by a few.

if the transformation - transition into this divine state - could be put into the schematic language of music, it might sound something like this.

the stages:

0:00-4:29 = that existential anxiety and despair that comes packaged with religious belief not yet cleared of its errors. the immature stage; uncertain, at the kierkegaardian crossroads (to leap or not to leap), looking for a father who still ‘does not answer’ (nietzsche).

4:29-9:12 = begin the metamorphosis. one starts to lose faith… ‘this can’t be right, something is amiss, something is wrong’. one realizes how they’ve been deceived so many years. their minds begins to twist… a strength begins growing inside, plotting its vengeance, ready to finally liberate itself. one now understands, but doesn’t smile. not a smile, but a grin… a shit eating, sinister grin.

9:12-11:23 = breaks from the chains, rising from the ashes of the first stage and reaching that divine madness. it’s go time, alpha team.

11:23-12:30 = the final stage before death. all things must end. finished and exhausted, one is ready for their tragic death and goes willingly into its arms having lived as the ‘gods’ would have wanted.

so that’s pretty much what it would sound like. that would be the epic theme song ‘god’ wrote for the script. pretty fuckin’ good, right? everything else is just noise or elevator music god wrote to characterize the lives of those who couldn’t solve the puzzle.

You don’t seem to get the point.

Note re Big Bang Theory;

Hypothesis: The Big Bang is the beginning of the Universe.
Assumption: There is something rather than nothing.
Speculated Theory: Evidences support the theory BB is the beginning of the universe.

BUT, in this case the theory [conclusion] is conditioned upon the assumption.
As such you cannot covert the assumption to a conclusion, i.e.
‘There is something rather than nothing’.

Thus the best you can conclude is according to Science, the BB is the origin of the universe conditioned upon the assumption ‘there is something rather than nothing’.
Therefore we cannot be certain there is absolutely ‘something rather than nothing’.

What is most realistic and practical is this;

Depending on the case defined;

  • case X -there is something rather than nothing,
  • case Y -there is nothing rather than something.

Why people insist on one [mostly X] and not the other is because of their own desperate internal psychological state of insecurity.

On the other hand, where exactly does ontology end and teleology begin here? If teleology is even a factor at all. Ultimately [whatever that means], I think most of this revolves around the fact that we are creatures who know that we are going to die. And [for some of us] it seems likely that “I” is obliterated. As in utterly.

So, if someone is actually able to come up with an argument that can make sense of something rather than nothing and this something rather than another something, there’s a really, really, really slim chance that we can scale this nothingness back to a frame of mind that is a little less terrifying.

Unless of course you want to die.

And then on this side of the grave not only do I not know what I ought to do in my interactions with others revolving around value judgments, I don’t think that [in a No God world] this can be known. Anything can be rationalized. If for no other reason that almost everything already has been.

“I” here is [for me] an existential contraption far, far far, beyond being able either to completely understand or to control.

On the other hand, if there be a God, it’s His way or the highway. The highway to Hell for example.

Depending on the extent to which this extant God is in possession of, say, omniscience and omnipotence?

As for the “stages” how could they not in turn be but the embodiment of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy? Not unlike the stages that a Freudian or a Marxist or Jungian might suggest.

Here [as with everything else] there are those parts that we are able to effectively demonstrate to others as being true, and there are those parts that we think are true “in our head” but can’t manage get others to believe are true in theirs.

Yeah, my point is that all of this is no less embedded in the gap between what we/others think is known about the Big Bang/Something and all that would need to be known about the existence of existence itself.

How do we make that part go away? Other than in concocting conflicted frames of mind about all of this in our heads? In places like this.

We don’t even know for certain if the psychological insecurity that we feel is something we actually choose freely to feel.

Eneree Gundalai from Philosophy Now magazine

Really, what would you tell your child? Or, more to the point, what could you tell her?

That’s how it would no doubt unfold alright. A host of folks taking a stab at it more or less informed about it than the astrophysicists own stabs at it are able to impart.

Maybe that’s why the overwhelming preponderance of folks, preoccupied with subsisting from day to day and paying the bills, never give it all that much thought. They just leave it up to the ecclesiastics.

Who may or may not be closer to the truth than the scientists.

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”

By John Horgan in Scientific American

Of course none of us will probably ever really know whether science will eventually explain why there’s something instead of nothing.

If for no other reason that all of us will no doubt be dead and gone by the time science is able to actually accomplish it. If it is ever able to.

Unless, of course, there is a God and one day He is able to explain it.

Still, folks like us – philosophers – seem ever inclined to broach and to explore questions such as this anyway. For whatever it is worth. And for better or for worse.

Thus he gets right to the point: Never say never. Of course knowing what stars are made of is not the same thing as knowing why, say, our own particular star is made of this stuff and not of some other stuff entirely. Let alone why it exist to be made of any stuff at all.

On the other hand…

So, even before we get to any possible answers, we are encumbered with the uncertainty as to whether an answer is even within our reach at all. After all, how can we know for certain that the human brain [being itself but a component of our own particular somethingness] is even capable of connecting the dots here to that infamous TOE.

Let alone connecting the dots between that and an explanation for why “I” chooses particular things to do from day to day to day.

As I had stated above the whole of the Scientific Framework from its essence is grounded and conditioned by an ASSUMPTION,
There is something rather than nothing.

There is no way Science will work if Science do not include the above assumption as a fundamental condition.

Given the above condition, there is no way Science, as its default, will ever want to prove,
There is something [ultimate] rather than nothing.

Note that ‘something’ refers to the ultimate thing, i.e. the thing-in-itself, the substance, essence, οὐσία ousia, and other names,

One thing we are certain is there are humans [some, most?] who are desperate to want to be sure “there is something rather than nothing.”
I believe Science and Philosophy can find answers to the above to deal with the related cognitive dissonance.

For most humans, there must be a cause to every effect, but Hume disagreed that such a principle is ultimate but rather the underlying factor to ‘a cause for an effect’ is actually psychological, i.e. grounded on the minds of human[s] individually and collectively.

It is the same for the desperation to ground something to a substance [thing], we should ignore such desperation and instead focus on the psychology of the question of ‘there must be something [ultimate] instead of nothing’.

Btw, it is the same desperate psychology of why you are stuck in a deep shit hole you have dug for yourself.

On the below premises… can we get/create an object/the Universe out of nothing? all the probable scientific laws say we cannot, and do the Universal laws say likewise? what of them…? and do we even know what they wholly and truthfully are…? are they even verifiable under our current scientific knowledge-base?

:-k

On the level, when the simulation become insidiferentiable with or by the simulacra, the stimulated inference may occasion a pause, wherein the illuminated answer may present Its’Self.

As stated above Science had NEVER proven conclusively we cannot produce things out of nothing.
Science merely ASSUME ‘there is something from something’ or ‘there is something instead of nothing’.

The quest to search for something ultimate rather than nothing is a flawed hypothesis.

Seems reasonable to me. But questions this problematic may well bend the boundaries of what our own species is even able to differentiate as reasonable or unreasonable. Why is something more reasonable than nothing? Why is this something more reasonable than another something? Are there in fact parallel universes in which reason revolves around very different laws intertwining space and time, matter and energy?

And all of this seems [for now] to be predicated on particular assumptions about the initial “conditions” in place when existence itself either came into existence out of nothing at all or [even more mind-boggling?] was able to always exist.

Then it’s back to Bryan Magee floundering about regarding just how surreal “being reasonable” can seem here.

Or the name that most prefer: God.

But that’s the beauty of discussions like this. You may well be wrong regarding your own conclusions, but then no one else seems capable of demonstrating that they are right.

More to the point existentially most humans are intent upon believing they are in touch with the real me regarding the right thing to do on this side of the grave, and that “I” will continue on, on the other side of it. That is basically “something” to them in a nutshell. Then it’s back to God or one or another rendition of pantheism.

In our lifetime?

This seems likely to be the case. But then we all get stuck because we don’t know where to take the discussion [and the assumptions] beyond that. How does human psychology fit into an understanding of existence itself? And, sans God, we will tumble over into the abyss that is nothingness for all of eternity.

And this triggers all manner of psychological reactions that, in turn, get swallowed up in the profound mystery of it all.

On the other hand, there is no on/off switch in our brain that allows for this to be easy as “flicking a switch”. This too is embodied in dasein. We all have different experiences that either bring us into or do not bring us into discussions like this.

I dug it, true, but that is no less an “existential contraption”. And, more to the point, my rendition of the hole revolves more around conflicting goods in the is/ought world.

Though, sure, I – “I” – am no less drawn and quartered in regard to the Big Questions.

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”

By John Horgan in Scientific American

This is the part where most of us here begin to flounder. Why? Because we don’t have an education sophisticated enough to react to this in a sophisticated manner.

Are the “probabilistic dictates of quantum field theory” a reasonable assumption to make here? Instead, for the technically unsophisticated among us, we can only take note of the extent to which the hard guys in the hard sciences are able to go beyond “theory” and create experiments able to actually demonstrate empirically [phenomenally] the “whole truth”. And then peruse the assumptions that the hard guys in the soft sciences make in connecting the dots between all of that and “I” going about the business of living our lives.

But here, however, it is important to note things like this:

And even the hard guys in the hard sciences have no sophisticated understanding of what that means. If, in fact, it is even true.

Some actually speculate that dark energy/matter is as the result of “seepage” from other universes into our own.

bbc.co.uk/earth/story/201411 … ist-at-all - an interesting read, but not really a damning hypothesis for agreement.

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”
By John Horgan in Scientific American

Isn’t this the basic problem here in a nutshell? No matter who or what you start with in attempts to encompass somethingness – God, space/time, quantum mechanics – you’re stuck with explaining where that came from. But if you sweep a beginning under the rug, you’re left with explaining how something can just always exist. In the other words, the only thing in the entire universe that did not come into existence out of either nothing at all or out of something that we cannot actually put into words.

Of course that means that all attempts to “smack down” the speculations of others are no less on shaky ground.

Period? Case closed? End of story? Okay, but of theirs or yours?

Horgan is unnecessarily pissy, it seems to me, but I felt like Albert kept thinking he had explained precisely what Horgan is saying he did not. There were possibilities in the nothing that lead necessarily to something. Well, possibilities are not nothing. He kept trying to get more and more abstract and vague, but there was always some kind of rules, laws, tendencies, possibilities present. I wouldn’t say the issue cannot be solved, but in a popular science book - that is, intended for people who are not physicists, he failed with a number of fairly intelligent readers I know. And I see no consensus in the astrophysics community either that we solved that one.

There’s a human urge to shelve files as quickly as possible under solved. Police are notoriously in a hurry with such things as many a black man can tell you.

Well, whenever we are less and less able to demonstrate empirically, physically, phenomenally etc., what we think is true about “somethingness” in our head, the more our only recourse is a world of words. A world of intellectual assumptions about the relationship between the something that is existence and the something that is “I” speculating about it.

And living in it.

Abstraction is less the concern here for some than with those who actually imagine that their own abstractions need be as far as we go.

And my own emphasis here is always on the existential relationship between “I” and “all there is”.

And, as well, on the manner in which claiming to have “solve” something like this is rooted less in science and philosophy and more in human psychology. Being able to anchor “I” to one or another TOE.

But what that is rooted to is still…what exactly?

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”
By John Horgan in Scientific American

Clearly, when it comes to The Question, who really knows where science ends and philosophy begins? We don’t even know if, as well, there is a demarcation here between them and theology.

What is is?

But at least the scientists go about the business of connecting their words to the world. They may propose some really wild speculations about mind-boggling relationships that most of us have no sophisticated understanding of, but they do go out into space and into our brains in order to attach these conjectures to actual “things”.

They then collect and accumulate data about interactions able to be demonstrated to others. Interactions in which experiments can be conducted, predictions can be made, results can replicated.

Whereas here arguments alone are often construed to be demonstration enough. In other words, words defining and defending only other words.

Arguments that aim more to satisfy some that the explanation itself is the whole point of the pursuit. To think that you know is the equivalent of mission accomplished.

Then and only then can you anchor “I” to a far more reassuring sense of reality.

Basically, this part…

That elusive “spiritual” foundation. And this revolves more around the purpose of somethingness, the meaning of it.

After all, only in approaching it from this angle can “I” be anchored teleologically to final truths on this side of the grave and to immortality on the other side of it.

That “something” is said to exist barely scratches the surface here. Instead, “I” needs to be connected to a “happy ending” as well.

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”
By John Horgan in Scientific American

If nothing else, this reminds us how, when push comes to shove, the meaning of God and the meaning of Existence are both intertwined in what has got to be nothing short of a mind-boggling explanation.

Some [like Rabbi Harold Kushner] have imagined God as all knowing but not all powerful. In order to explain why “bad things happen to good people”. So, sure, why not a God that is not omniscient. Why not a Creator unable to grasp why He himself exists?

How much more unimaginable is that than everything there is coming into existence out of nothing at all. Or everything there is having no beginning [and presumably no end] at all.

I think anyone with even an ounce of intelligence recognizes how ineffable “being” seems to be. It is just not something you can wrap your head around and really feel satisfied with your own explanation. Unless, in my view, you are an idiot.

Or, here, a Kid.

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”
By John Horgan in Scientific American

What is it about the human brain that compels us to propose things like this?

He avers that science will never explain why there is something instead of nothing. Or why this particular something and not another.

In much the same way that others declare there either is or is not a God. That there either is or is not an objective morality. That we either are or are not wholly determined.

Still, the scientific method for exploring these things is not at all the same thing as a leap of faith to God.

My own speculation here is that while we do not have answers to these questions here and now, some of us are considerably closer to oblivion than others. We sense that while, sure, “down the road”, science may in fact explain things that are still profound mysteries to us now. But “I” won’t be around to marvel at them.

As with so much embedded in the “human condition”, it comes down to the actual existential relationship between any particular individual and “all there is”.

Both on this side of the grave and the other side of it.