why does something - rather than nothing - exist?
its a good question. but a touch misleading i think.
the question should be asked, ‘why do things exist’ …to discurage the existentially minded who’d give the decided use for something and claim it as a reason for existing.
to hammer nails might be teh reason a hammer exists, but the question is asking about cement, or iron (whatever a hammer is made out of)
this sounds a lot like my thread entitled why is “is” that I started. The answers seem confusing to me too. I have no scholarly answer, here, so good luck. but since I’m bored, and at risk of boring you…
maybe the problem is the word “why,” since it implies an end goal reason in some cases. Just to be clear, I think we can safely change it to “how” is there something rather than nothing. “why” isn’t necessary, but “how” is. I think that’s progress right there. Then if we want, we turn to science. I remember something about a glitch in the quantum foam, but that begs the question.
I think no one can explain it today without resorting to religious themes that beg the question even worse.
i think there IS a case in which something occured that involved or demanded something rather than nothing, and there is a 'How" involved. If this actual case were conveyed to us humans, I think we have the capacity to understand it. Therefore, I think there’s a good chance we’ll discover the answer to this question. But only a handful of humans will understand it, kind of like qed or string theory , but even less accessible and less intutive
but like I said, wild speculation, but the best i have.
I don’t think “why” implies any teleology in the existence of things, but it does imply that there is an answer to the question - an explanation - and it’s not clear that all things do have sufficient reasons.
yeah, but why say why when you can say how when why can also be taken teleoligiclly? but who cares, we’re wasting time splitting the wrong hairs. there are three answers; 1. don’t know 2. god did it 3. the question is unitelligible. I like the first answer. You?
heidegger said nothing of real import about being. it’s all metaphysical hogwash, abstruse and in the end obvious. he discovered more en route to pursuing an answer to his question about being. derrida deconstructs heidegger’s question and renders it useless (see item 3 in post above). Rorty calls it the “myth” of being that heidegger puts forth.
whitelotus is wrong again
yeah I certainly find the question unintellegible… i can say it over and over but I get the feeling that there is nothing to work with (belief in god might help i guess)…
that the words kind of loose their meaning in the sentance… like something and nothing being opposed as actual things when they can only really be relative judgements or something… like nothing needs a medium of something to be intellegible… real unsituated nothingness just doesnt mean anything (means nothing lol)…
seems like there would be a lot more to say about it froma linguistic point of view than from an ontological one… but I’m not up to the challenge.
I allways tend to find the really “big” questions unintelligble, most probably because I’m not very intellegent lol.
Introduction to Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger.
Chapter 1: The fundamental question of metaphysics
Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? That is the question. Presumably it is no arbitrary question. “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” – this is obviously the first of all questions. O f course, it is not the first question in the chronological sense. Individuals as well as peoples ask many questions in the course of their historical passage through time. They explore, investigate, and test many things before they run into the question “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” Many never run into this question at all, if running into the question means not only hearing and reading the interrogitive sentence as uttered, but asking the question, that is, taking a stand on it, posing it, compelling oneself into the state of this questioning.
And yet, we are each touched once, maybe even now and then, by the concealed power of this question, without properly grasping what is happening to us. In great despair, for example, when all weight tends to dwindle away from things and the sense of things grows dark, the question looms. Perhaps it strikes only once, like the muffled tolling of a bell that resounds into Dasein and gradually fades away. The question is there in heartfelt joy, for then all things are transformed and surround us as if for the first time, as if it were easier to grasp that they were not, rather than that they are, and as they are. The question is there in a spell of boredom, when we are equally distant from despair and joy, but when the stubborn ordinariness of beings lay open a wasteland in which it makes no difference to us whether beings are or are not–and then, in a distinctive form, the question resonates once again: Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?
But whether this question is asked explicitly, or whether it merely passes through our Dasein like a fleeting gust of wind, unrecognized as a question, whether it becomes more oppressive or is thrust away by us agaain and suppressed under some pretext, it certainly is never the first question that we ask.
But it is the first question in another sense-- namely, in rank. This can be clarified in three ways. The question “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” is first in rank for us as the broadest, as the deepest, and finally as the most originary question.
The question is the broadest in scope. It comes to a halt at no being of any kind whatsoever. The question embraces all that is, and that means not only what is now present at hand in the broadest sense, but also what has previously been and what will be in the future. The domain of this question is limited only by what simply is not and never is: by Nothing. All that is not Nothing comes into the question, and in the end even Nothing itself-- not, as it were, because it is something, a being, for after all we are talking about it, but because it “is” Nothing. The scope of our question is so broad that we can never exceed it. We are not interrogating this being or that being, nor all beings, each in turn; instead, we are asking from the start about the whole of what is, or as we say for reasons to be discussed later: beings as a whole and such.
Just as it is the broadest question, the question is also the deepest: Why are there beings at all…? Why-- that is, what is the ground? From what ground do beings come? On what ground do beings stand? To what ground do beings go? The question does not ask this or that about beings-- what they are in each case, here and there, how they are put together, how they can be changed, what they can be used for, and so on. The questioning seeks the ground for what is, insofar as it is in being. To seek the ground: this means to get to the bottom (ergrunden). What is put into question comes into relation with a ground. But because we are questioning, it remains an open question whether the ground is a truly grounding, foundation-effecting, originary ground; whether the ground refuses to provide a foundation, and so is an abyss; or whether the the ground is neither one or the other, but merely offers the perhaps necessary illusion of a foundation and is thus an un-ground. However this may be, the question seeks a decision with respect to the ground that grounds the fact of what is, is in being as the being that it is. This why-question does not seek causes for beings, causes of the same kind and on the same level as beings themselves. This why-question does not just skim the surface, but presses into the domains that lie “at the ground,” even pressing into the ultimate, to the limit; the question is turned away from all surface and shallowness, striving for depth; as the broadest, it is at the same time the deepest of the deep questions.
Moonoq, it seems that Heidegger was not concerned with why “things” exist. That is secondary and far from the point, but what was he after. It seems like a question in which one must will all preconceiived notions of a normal answer away, and learn a new method of inquiry. Where does that get you and where do you go from there. into an immense maze that terrifies at every turn? I’ve suddenly become taciturn, but that’s no suprise.
THE FIRST LINE of Intro To Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger. I knew it.
The mean queen is nothing more than a cruel fool.
By the way, whitelotus. Heidegger was a dramaqueen about technology. No doubt this is a subject you are sufficiently intimate with. Dramaqueens, that is.
Not much of a techno-monkey today, whitelotus?
Why do you try hard to become human?
ladjfh
my dearest whitescrotus. I have a confession. I am in fact Carl Lewis. The famous african-american sprinter. No, I’m not. But I’m african-american. Well, american anyway, if by american you mean “doesn’t live in america and never has been to america.” My point? Exactly. Here…take two minutes to solve this riddle. Three mice fumbled blindly in the night. One said “spiffy lass, please pass the protoplasmic fence prior to the addled mollusk of Lothar gets scrambled by the fat, bald men who dub himselves king of all things until further notice.” See? You are no match for me. Your tiny speck is a mind of dust and you shall serve at the foothills of my glorious prolix cantations, betwixt an igneous briss and broken crockery. Now, when I say betwixt, does it make you yearn for a Twix bar? Liar! Tell it straight FOR ONCE. You idiot. I INVENTED Heidegger, as this cogent post attests.
Gamer, Whitelotus seems to be turning you into a pure asshole. You are more intelligent than that. Your last post has one good line, which is “spiffy lass, please pass the protoplasmic fence prior to the addled mollusk of Lothar gets scrambled by the fat, bald men who dub himselves king of all things until further notice.” Only the last ten words prove your point the rest is unintelligible. Have you been reading Finnegan’s Wake? The point of this thread is Heidegger, not your ongoing war with a man that is spiteful and full of venom. I’m still not convinced you have ever read Heidegger, and I tend to beleive Whitelotus’s assertion that, if you have read him you have not understood him. Maybe you dont want. I can understand that.
Now that is out of the way I can get to my real purpose for posting at this moment.
I have asked myself the question about 30-40 times in the last day “Why are ther beings at all instead of noting.” At first I simply hit an impasse. I could not get past the devoling into things. But eventually I realized that the question itself is a paradox, because it cant be answered with any great assurety. The importance of it, the question itself, is where it leads you on the path of inquiry. Where can it take you. What thoughts may it divulge that you would otherwise be oblivious of, or otherwise may not have even considered.
I also want to state that the greatest value any philoosphy forum can have is in the sense of a Lyceum. There are students and teachers. All of us are one or the other at some point.
Well, assholes are something whitescrotus knows a thing about, so you may be right. I will say that my post, like all GOOD things, Aletheia, reveals quite a lot by revealing almost nil. Be well, ignoranus.
Then why not just be a techno-monkey?
What prerequisites would you set for a student before he or she could read Heidegger, if you were establishing a curriculum?
prerequisite #1:
the ability to read after repeatedly hitting oneself on the top of the head with a 5 pound rubber mallet
-Imp
Because it is impossible and illogical for nothing to exist!