The big question; Why ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing’?
That’s a big question. The best I’ve found is, “If not then what would ask?” You’re here because you’re here. Anything else speaks of divine purpose to reality.
There was lots of talk that there isn’t such a thing as “nothing” or “the void”… for a while that was considered nonsense, but now, it seems, there’s a resurgence of that ideal in quantum mechanics.
Something can’t come from nothing…
Nothing can’t come from nothing…
So Something has to come from Something…
So there’s no Nothing…There’s Always has been Something!!!
blah blah blah…!!!
the always dashing rafajafar wrote:
which is a good answer. i’d only add to that, why can’t we also ask: why not something instead of somethings? the binary opposition that the Man has got us thinking in is stifiling! we must break from our colonial past ppl, it’s the only way. objectivity is not the only way. there is not just 2 ways of being.
Something rather than nothing is not me. I am not questioning why ‘i am’ and not ‘am not’. if i were not here, then everything else still would be. So why is there ‘‘something’’ rather than ‘‘nothing’’? Or is ‘‘something’’ something that just is. There is no other mode or alternative?
Fazu’s logic is rather too complicated for me.
For me, Nothing it self is something. Hope you’ve noticed that I haven’t used the capital S for something there.
Cause it makes no difference…
A quick logical argument against the existence of ‘nothing’:
Logically one would say nothing is the lack or the ‘not’ of something.
In logic such a claim would be expressed by ~Ex (existential quantifier)
Such a claim can also be expressed as “there is no (one or more) thing”
However, the more is not to be understood as ‘all’ things. Put another way, the universal quantifier Vx is outside the realm of ~Ex. In conclusion, to say there is no (one or more) thing leaves the option of all things. One may argue that we could say that there is no (all of a certain) thing. Logically expressed as negating the universal quantifier or ~Vx. However, negating the universal quantifier allows for the existential quantifier. Put another way, to say that there is no (all of a certain thing) is to leave the option open for there to be one or more of a certain thing.
In conclusion, there is no such thing as ‘nothing’ in logic.
What’s your take?
Perhaps I’m in the minority, but this has always been good enough for me:
“Why?”
“… why not?”
One cannot experience nothingness, simply by definition. Unless there’s some way to “experience nothingness” in some fashion which those words don’t do justice to but form the best approximation I can make here, the question is basically purposeless. We exist (or at least I exist 
), and I’ll “experience nothingness” when that is no longer the case. Until then, I won’t worry myself over it unless someone can do more than play with words.
Magius - it is impossible to say “nothing exists” in logic, possibly because it would then itself cease to exist? Maybe the way to say “there is nothing” is simply to say nothing, remain silent? Is this similar to Wittgenstein’s Proposition 7?
Greetings Zen,
I have read your post and have come to be interested in learning more about your views. What is the relation between “why?”/“why not?” and “something”/“nothing”?
You stated:
I thought I might attempt to do more than just play with words. According to your above quote you will experience nothingness when you no longer exist. I’m not sure how you mean that. Allow me explain my own confusion…I assume that my existence is inexorably tied to experience. In fact, in my personal opinion the meaning of life is experience, but that’s another matter. If you agree that experience is inexorably tied to you existing, then it is also to say that once you no longer exist neither will your state of experiencing. Furthermore, your quote appears to assume not only that ‘nothingness’ exists but that it can be experienced. I will hold off on the former and presently look to that latter. I will propose an experiment…close your eyes, relax, let everything out and think of ‘nothing’; what are you thinking about? The outcome is that you cannot think of ‘nothing’. Most people think they are thinking of nothing when they are imagining blackness, like staring into the night sky except that the stars are missing. Perhaps we could argue that nothingness can’t be thought about but still can be experienced. But we can’t attribute any qualities to it, which is to say that we can’t even discuss the matter. Back to your former assumption that ‘nothingness’ exists. I present a fun and brief argument against the existence of ‘nothingness’, then you came in and said there is nothingness but didn’t back it up. I’m all about equality and treating others as I would like to be treated so I have extended you the courtesy of providing not just a claim about nothingness but also an argument for my claim. On the other hand, you made a claim but an argument is yet to be seen. I await patiently.
Zen stated:
Why would logic cease to exist if for instance we created a symbol that represents ‘nothing’ and implemented it into logic? Furthermore, I didn’t say that it is impossible to say “nothing exists” in logic, it actually is possible to say it and even represent it in…say predicate logic form, or even semantic logic form. Furthermore, even if your logic argument was correct, wouldn’t the same follow for language? If language has a word or concept of ‘nothing’ then it too shouldn’t exist. Or perhaps there is some important difference between language and logic in reference to your argument that I have simply missed.
Zen stated:
You seem to be more concerned with ‘why’ it is that my logical argument is correct. My argument is simply a logical argument, the ‘why’ it is correct (if it is correct) would take, I suspect, a long study of logic itself. You may wish to pick one type of logic and see what follows from that, since there are many many forms of logic it would be a quite arduous task to study logic itself to provide ‘why’, atleast in the scope of this thread. Lastly, my argument had no intention of sounding Wittgensteinian, there is actually very little I know about Wittgenstein.
Perhaps you could educate me on some of his principles, I’m always open to learning.
What’s your take?
Well, that’ll teach me to be vague again. I wrote:
…and hoped that that would be clear enough. I don’t think nothingness can “be experienced” in any fashion but wanted to leave the door open for people who wanted to assert some kind of halfway state or religious experience or I-know-not-what. Basically, I think nothing is nothing and unless someone has some kind of religious interpretation on the question, I think nothing is still nothing. To the extent that it is at all possibleto “experience” a state other than actual being (which, given my experiences with e.g. deep sleep, I do not think it is), I believe that this is possible upon death, and only then.
As for logic, I was just trying toask some questions that would encourage building on your conclusion:
To answer one of your questions, I do in fact think there is a big difference between logic and the wider medium of language. To get Wittgenstein out of the way, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he lays out a whole lot of propositions, attempting to keep them basically in logical format. One of the goals of the work is to expel from philosophy anything that cannot be expressed in logical language. The propositions are numbered thusly: 1, 1.2, 3.4132, etc. Proposition 7, the very last one in the work, states: “What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.”
Logic is a particular branch of language that is used to work with “pure” information - statements are absolutely true or false, and everything is laid out concretely - nuance and ambiguity are not only anathema, but impossible. Language, as a whole entity, can express its concepts in black-and-white, pseudo-logical format, but also expresses concepts by means of metaphor, misdirection, sarcasm, and rarely ever limits itself to logical expression.
To combine the above statements and ideas, then, here is my view.
It has never really crossed my mind to wonder about being vs. nothingness; I disagree with Wittgenstein that we must pass over in silence what we cannot discuss with logic; and therefore I feel as though the question “Why?” as in “Why is there anything?” is not one I need to worry over strenuously - the answer “Why not?” denotes an inspiring vision of the infinite possibility that I feel there “is” because I exist, which I cannot express by means of logical statements but only by turning poetical (which others tend to find somewhat distasteful - and sometimes I find myself agreeing with them 
).
I hope I’ve been able to elucidate my position in a way that cannot be taken as a rude dismissal of any of your arguments (or as a pile of unjustified assertions); if I came across that way in my first post, I apologize - that was certainly not my intention.
Don’t worry about being vague, I’ll simply ask which part I need elaborated upon. Furthermore, please don’t take my last post to be saying that you were rude. It’s my way of saying “Hey, throw me a bone here!”. Many people have told me that I come off as rude or snobby, but I am neither. The words I use I mean literally, if you piss me off or if I think you have been rude with one or more of your statements, believe me, I will quote them and then tell you that that statement was rude or that you pissed me off with it. Hence, I too am sorry if I came across the wrong way.
You said that nothingness cannot be experienced until death. You also said that you disagree with Wittgenstein’s claim that what cannot be expressed in logic shouldn’t be spoken about. Hence, I see that you want to talk about things like ‘nothingness’ without a stable ground to start from. Granted. That is okay, but in that case, we need to establish at least some kind of foundation or agreement from which you and I can work in discussing the matter. In an attempt to find a foundation to work from I looked to your post and found “nothing is nothing” which is a tautology and provides zero information. The equivalent of saying A=A or “a thing is true by definition”. It is the latter form that caught me and I decided to hit my dictionary (figuratively speaking). According to The New Lexicon Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of The English Language the term ‘nothing’ is defined as “no thing, not anything at all, not anything of importance or interest” while the term ‘nothingness’ is defined as “the state of non-existence, the absence of any thing whatsoever, total insignificance”
Here are my comments on the two definitions. In terms of ‘nothing’ we see that it is defined firstly as ‘no thing’, but what ‘thing’ are we speaking of? Anything you sub in will still leave something else. So that if I say “no chair” that doesn’t mean that in the place of the chair there is absolutely nothing, it just means that there isn’t a chair. This applies to all subjects, with a few exceptions…if you sub ‘reality’, ‘universe’, or ‘atoms’ into the definition then it would be difficult to comprehend what would be in its place, but even then we are not forced to answer that there would be nothing. The second definition of ‘nothing’ fits my first logical argument. The third definition of nothing already has a subject it refers to, namely importance and interest, which is to say that when we saying ‘nothing’ it simply means that there is not anything of importance or interest to us, but it doesn’t mean that there is nothing (in the absolute sense).
In terms of ‘nothingness’ which is defined as a state of non-existence strikes me as a little weird. Since the definition presupposes that the lack of existence is a state, but then what is a state? Whatever a state is, it is something. The second definition “the complete absense of anything whatsoever” seems to fit your elucidation best. But when we die our matter doesn’t become completely absent, it simply disperses (breaks apart) - but it’s still there, it still exists, there is something there. Furthermore, the second definition also applies to my negative the existential quantifier critique. The last definition of ‘nothingness’ is dependent upon what ‘significance’ means, but I’m sure you would agree that is something is insignificant, it doesn’t cease existing. Signification is relative.
I do, however, agree with you that there is a big difference between logic and language.
Mysteriously, at the end of your last post you make a rather Cartesian argument for ‘existence’, namely that you know you exist but cannot express it through logic. So we are left with speaking about both existence and non-existence (nothing/nothingness) without a firm foundation. Again, this is okay, as long as, we agree on one or a few points from which our conversation can take off. I have tried to do so with the dictionary definitions, if they don’t work for you, feel free to provide a foundation you think best for us to work from.
What’s your take?
I think this question has relevance because of our own experience of cognitive development. The developmental process of personality formation is only partially visible to the personality that gets created. We are born with an unfinished personality. We are not quite a blank slate, but we do lack a strong sense of identity.
In the course of our development we acquire a stable sense of identity. Yet the formation of the sense of identity is not clearly visible to us. I cannot see all of the events that shaped my personality. My personality, my sense of identity, looks like it came out of nowhere. Something came from nothing. There are probably a few salient points, but most of it is hidden from my view.
My sense of identity is something that looks like it came out of nothing. I know that my body came from my parents, and a broken condom, but I don’t completely identity my sense of identity with my body. I had a body before I had a strong sense of identity.
So this idea of something coming from nothing is very personal. Otherwise the idea has no basis. We see endless examples of something coming from something, or something transforming into something else. The conservation of mass and energy would lead us to believe that nothing disappears instead everything just changes from one form to another.
It is also interesting how we have a sense of continuity when we go through many changes in our life. Yet we always feel a sense that we are the same person, even though if you were confronted with a version of you self from ten years in the past you wouldn’t think of him as being exactly you.
I would agree with fazu that there has always been something. It continuously transforms itself into all the myriad things, just as Lao Tzu wrote.
Magius - lots here to discuss. Briefly, I meant by “nothing is nothing” that I had not seen fit to scrutinize very closely the “common sense” definition of “nothing” or “nothingness” and thus was saying I don’t see a way to know what it is like not to be.
Lemme digest some of this for a while. I may find myself rethinking some propositions. 
I’ll respond at length a little later on.
Zen,
kewl. Take your time.
To distinguish between “this” thing and “that” thing is to separate them, remove them from eachother, when in reality, they remain together. Nothing, or the non-existence of things, is not the opposite of Something, or the existence of things. “Things” only exist in the mind – in reality, they remain together – but not as ‘one thing’, as this, too, is a distinction – for what is outside the uncontainable thing? – from what do you distinguish it?
When I get to asking why, I don’t mean “…for what purpose?” Although I wouldn’t mind knowing the history, or the why, of how the universe came to exist or … always was… just out of curiousity (just as I like to know the history, or the why, of how the U.S., etc., came to be…) – I just wonder why there is existence, rather than none – I don’t know. But I’m happy I’m ‘experiencing’, most of the time, so it seems pointless to fret over such an unanswerable question… about the only point I can see to it is to freak yourself out, inducing a massive state of awe, sending shivers up your spine, --and promise never to take it for granted…
i dunno… as far as “i am” versus “i am not”, i figure if i wasn’t, i wouldn’t care.
because i wouldn’t be able to care.
because i wouldn’t be.
lol
there simply wouldn’t be a ‘‘you’’. There would be no moment.
(didn’t see the last post before I posted… referring to the previous two) …and that’s supposed to stop one from wondering…? I don’t get it.