Something Instead of Nothing

“Pragmatism is the only true philosophy because by default it is the only one that works all of the time”

Lol!

Okay, but this is still just another “general description”.

Now, clearly, when it comes to any discussion or debate revolving around something instead of nothing, no one seems able to get any more specific other than by acknowledging right from the start that what they think they know about it is certainly a long, long, long way from all that can be known.

It basically becomes an exchange of wild ass conjectures. More or less thought through. But never able to be thought through enough. Then some people become fascinated by it, while others could not care less. The part I attribute to dasein.

But brutality here only goes so far. No scientist seems able to explain something rather than nothing such that this explanation is viewed by others as brutal. What can that possibly even mean?

But that doesn’t make the gap between what they think/say/do and a definitive explanation for why they thought/said/did it go away. There is something instead of nothing here and now. Only we have no comprehensive methodology [scientific, philosophical or otherwise] for explaining that — depending on how far out on the metapysical limb one is prepared to go.

And, of course, depending on whether even those excursions are only what they ever could have been given a wholly determined universe.

Yes, but even that can be construed as more or less problematic: philosophynow.org/issues/74/The … en_Anymore

As with most things, it depends on the actual context…understood from a particular point of view.

Tell that to the moral and the political and the metaphysical objectivists.

Okay, but then it comes down to the extent to which, as a pragmatist, one is either more or less down in the hole that I am in dealing with “I” as either more or less fractured and fragmented. All presuming some measure of autonomy and completely leaving aside the question of something rather than nothing at all.

And it works only until your own rendition of behaving pragmatically collides head long into another’s very, very different rendition. The part where, for me, the hole comes into play.

Unless of course your own understanding of the grand scheme of things here and now is no where near what it actually is.

All true although for me it is not really wild ass but a model of reality I use as a reference point for trying to make sense of what I think I know
You cannot be too specific when you have very little knowledge to go on but the model that you do have should still be as accurate as possible

And yes some are fascinated by it while others are not - that is just human nature - it would be very unusual if we all thought the same all of the time
As we are individuals with our own subjective likes and dislikes which is a consequence of free will - so we can decide what to like and what not to like

Here, in my view, it all depends on how far back you want to go when acknowledging the gap between what you think you know here and now and all that can be known about existence itself.

In that context, even the most sophisticated minds would seem burdened with all of the “unknown unknowns” that stand between “I” and “all there is”. Sure, call them something other than wild-ass conjectures. But that doesn’t make the gap go away.

Unless of course there’s a gap between what I think here and what those truly sophisticated minds think that makes what they think not basically “scratching the surface of reality” conjectures.

Here though I keep coming back to [or going back to] the realization that “I” will soon enough be dead, utterly oblivious to anything that might not be just a wild-ass guess on my part here and now.

That’s about the size of it. But, again, in my view, our reactions to that are no less existential contraptions. Some think one way, some another. But there appears to be no way in which to determine the direction that the most rational minds ought to go in.

And this is in regard to that which it would appear to be either one way or another. No moral quandaries here.

I am not at all burdened by all of the unknown unknowns or even the known unknowns but just accept that I cannot know them
My death will also make me oblivious to any knowledge that comes after but this is something I equally accept without question

First, of course, just because here and now you don’t feel burdened by them doesn’t mean that, given your own infinitesimally tiny speck of somethingness floating about in the staggering vastness of the all there is somethingness [like mine], a new experience won’t trigger them. Tomorrow never knows as the song says. Well, assuming some measure of autonomy.

And, let’s face it, feeling burdened or not feeling burdened can easily be shoved way, way, way back in your mind as you go about the business of actually living your life.

I always note here how each of us as individuals is going to be more or less predisposed to go there given the entirely unique trajectory of experiences that “I” accumulates from the cradle to the grave.

Without question? As though there is this “real you” – a core you? – that comes to these conclusions and that’s that?

Well, let’s just say that we think about the existential emodiment of “I” here very differently.

“The Fundamental Question”
Arthur Witherall

For the life of me, I am unable to grasp how anyone can come to conclusions such as this without recognizing that they are, in the end, created entirely out of the assumptions embedded in the arguments themselves.

Some are clearly fascinated by speculations of this sort. And, sure, why not…take a stab at it. But to be a mere mortal on this tiny little planet in this tiny little solar system in this tiny little galaxy in what may well be this tiny little universe and speak of “necessary truths”?!

I can only see this as the ultimate attempt to [psychologically] embed or entangle [b]I[/b] in the ultimate somethingness. To be a part of nothing at all just doesn’t cut it.

The fact that this discussion revolves around feeling or not feeling awe in the face of whatever somethingness is speaks volumes in and of itself to me. It always comes back to us. To fitting the human species into this somethingness as more than just a speck of existence. That awe is something that we can feel about our own somethingness matters. As though something – everything there is – coming into existence out of nothing at all couldn’t induce an even more staggering awe.

“The Fundamental Question”
Arthur Witherall

From my frame of mind, it doesn’t matter how “detailed” a “formal argument” is regarding the somethingness/nothingness conundrum. It still remains a conundrum. A “conception of worlds” is always going to be far, far, far short of, say, the collection of evidence that astrophysicists have accumulated to date regarding the somethingness that we call the Big Bang. There may or may not have been nothing at all before it, but where it became a “something” involves an enormous amount of substantiation.

How would one go about setting up a subtraction of objects experiment that either takes us back to nothing at all or not?

For me though it’s not speculations of this sort themselves that irk me; rather, it is those that are defended by some as though they are not ultimately just sheer conjecture at all.

In other words, in his head.

And this settles what exactly? Or, okay, sure, perhaps my reaction here reflects that fact that, in many important respects, I haven’t a clear understanding at all of what he is trying to suggest. But a clear understanding, including ways to actually demonstrate it empirically/phenomenologically, are either available to us or they are not.

Until then it’s just another thought experiment to me.

“The Fundamental Question”
Arthur Witherall

From my frame of mind, this is clearly the option that is, if nothing else, the most self-fulfilling, the most optimistic, the most comforting and consoling. After all, not only do you have a “simple” explanation, but God is something you can point in the general direction of in order to sustain this somethingness in the general direction of all eternity. And in Paradise no less!

So, don’t count on that explanation ever really going away. And even many of those who don’t believe it probably want it to be true.

This sort of thinking has always seemed both specious and spurious to me. After all, it is only another “argument”, the truth of which depends entirely on how you define the meaning of words that you cannot take out of the argument itself and attach to any actual “thing”. Same with the so-called “complexities”. Things here become complex in a world of words only to the extent that up in the clouds of abstraction you make them complex. Intellectually.

For example:

Got that? God and the “straightforward deduction”. Right. From my perspective that is no less delusional than “somethingness and the straightforward deduction” or “nothingness and the straightforward deduction”. And switching over to induction doesn’t bring us any closer to an actual demonstrable argument.

So I’m sticking with the assumption that while it is ever fascinating to speculate about questions this mind-bending, only a fool would actually imagine [let alone profess] that, given all the “unknown unknowns” still out there [and, for some, oblivion], their own conclusions really are the right ones.

“The Fundamental Question”
Arthur Witherall

Besides, from positivism all the way up to scientism itself, there is just no getting around questions so mind-boggling that “metaphysical” is as good a word as any to describe them. Science can get closer and closer and closer to explaining how “existence” works, but how far is that still from why it works how it works? Let alone why existence is even around to work at all.

Avoiding my point altogether. Making a “claim” in regard to how one should react to “the fundamental question” is no closer to an answer – to the answer – whether you are deemed the world’s greatest philosopher, the world’s greatest scientist or the world’s greatest thinker period.

My frame of mind is that reactions to this [as with almost everything else this far out on the limb] are embedded far more in “I” as encompassed here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

It’s just that with science there is often considerably more “hard evidence” to back up any particular claim.

Now, when I confront the “fundamental question” my mind is quickly boggled. Is that awe? Is that what you should feel too?

“The Fundamental Question”
Arthur Witherall

Indeed.

After all, this can only be based on the assumption that the human brain has the capacity to grasp whatever the answer might possibly be. But that is just another component of the dilemma itself. Somethingness has evolved into matter able to ask the fundamental question. That in and of itself seems mind-boggling in a No God world.

But we have no idea how much closer we are to the answer, given, among other things, this:

“It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.”

So, for folks like me, we don’t know what to be more staggered by:

1] the something that does exist
2] how and why that something came to exist at all

Presupposing. There does not appear to be away around it. Presupposing that we understand what “a state of true nothingness” is we can then presuppose that it “would not submit to the laws of quantum mechanics”.

Presupposing that anyone is ever able to come up with a way test this experimentally. Given that the experiment itself can only be conducted in the somethingness that already does exist. How would one get around that? Other then theoretically in world of words intellectual contraption.

Still, sure, bravo for those who are at least groping to understand these things. What could possibly be more crucial than in understanding everything there is to know about the something that “I” am a part of.

It just may not actually ever be possible.

In our own lifetime, for example.

“The Fundamental Question”
Arthur Witherall

Teleology may well be the trickiest factor of all here. After all, it’s one thing to argue that somethingness came into existence out of nothing at all. Or was always around. It’s another thing altogether to link the ontological truth here with might be construed as an existence having a meaning or a purpose behind it.

And how would one grapple with this other than through God and religion?

Most of us conclude that it is good to be alive because we are convinced that life does have a meaning and a purpose linked precisely to God.

And, again, for most of us this revolves around a place of worship every Friday or Saturday or Sunday. Or, even if we reject God and religion, it becomes vital to link our own somethingness to that which transcends just little ole me. And this can range from being at one with nature, or being spiritually enlightened, or being politically correct to attaching “I” to one or another pantheistic regimen. Encompassing literally the entire universe.

Anything to avoid concluding existence itself is just the brute facticity that some describe it as.

“The Fundamental Question”
Arthur Witherall

Well, there you go. How is this then not applicable to any explanation at all?

For example…

What am I missing here? An “evaluative principle”? How is that in turn not a part of what is trying to be explained?

We can say anything. But what can we then demonstrate in turn? And the very act of saying anything at all would seem to be necessarily in sync with the somethingness that we are trying to connect to or disconnect from nothing at all.

I must not be grasping his point.

But what does this tell us about the absence of purpose in the absence existence itself? All of this speculation is embedded in a somethingness that we are trying to understand as having or not having a purpose in relationship to nothing at all.

So, is this just more “metaphysical” “mental masturbation” or is there actually some meat on the bones? What on earth is the relationship between “value” and the “cause of existence itself”?

Value “beyond being”?! Value as “self-explanatory”?

Really?

Witherall can’t get nothing past you, can he biggs? Way to keep this dude on the ropes, son. By god somebody’s gotta tell the fuckin truth around here.

What is the cause of the question after the cause of existence?

A lack of self-evidence. Which means a lack of sharpness. Which, in turn, means a lack of existence.

AHAHAHAHAHAbradabra.

“The Fundamental Question”
Arthur Witherall

Come on, let’s get serious. Imagining that someone can produce an argument that actually links together [teleologically, ontologically] nature, causality, and human morality is as far removed as ever from constructing a context in which it can actually be demonstrated.

Theoretical speculation about the “fundamental question” is fine. As long as we are still willing to settle for “theoretical answers”.

This part in other words:

On the other hand, better this approach perhaps then simply inventing a God able to explain everything. Meanwhile we can continue to aim our scientific tools in this direction:

That remains the Holy Grail among physicists. Taking a TOE down off the skyhooks and accomplishing the task of accumulating all the necessary facts able to actually evince/signify what reality is.

Starting with that which seems closest of all to being true: that somethingness is.

“Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?”
Dr. Michael Shermer in Skeptic magazine

Really, think about it. In grappling to understand what somethingness is we at least have the advantage of being something in it ourselves. We exist as something and when we look around all we see is something else.

Instead [for me] it’s always been part about groping to grasp why somethingness exists at all…and how it came to exist in the first place. After all, any number of astrophysicists will argue that first there was nothing at all. And then BOOM! the Big Bang. Everything there is somehow just “explodes” into existence.

Just don’t ask any of them to actually prove this.

At least with God we can attribute things to Him like omniscience and omniptence. End of story. As to how and why God came into existence…that is simply subsumed in His mysterious ways.

Or as Bryan Magee once superbly summed it all up:

[b]For a period of two to three years between the ages of nine and twelve I was in thrall to puzzlement about time. I would lie awake in bed at night in the dark thinking something along the following lines. I know there was a day before yesterday, and a day before that and a day before that and so on…Before everyday there must have been a day before. So it must be possible to go back like that for ever and ever and ever…Yet is it? The idea of going back for ever and ever was something I could not get hold of: it seemed impossible. So perhaps, after all, there must have been a beginning somewhere. But if there was a beginning, what had been going on before that? Well, obviously, nothing—nothing at all—otherwise it could not be the beginning. But if there was nothing, how could anything have got started? What could it have come from? Time wouldn’t just pop into existence—bingo!–out of nothing, and start going, all by itself. Nothing is nothing, not anything. So the idea of a beginning was unimaginable, which somehow made it seem impossible too. The upshot was that it seemed to be impossible for time to have had a beginning and impossible not for it to have had a beginning.

I must be missing something here, I came to think. There are only these two alternatives so one of them must be right. They can’t both be impossible. So I would switch my concentration from one to the other, and then when it had exhausted itself, back again, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong; but I never discovered.

space

I realized a similar problem existed with regard to space. I remember myself as a London evacuee in Market Harborough—I must have been ten or eleven at the time—lying on my back in the grass in a park and trying to penetrate a cloudless blue sky with my eyes and thinking something like this: "If I went straight up into the sky, and kept on going in a straight line, why wouldn’t I be able to just keep on going for ever and ever and ever? But that’s impossible. Why isn’t it possible? Surely, eventually, I’d have to come to some sort of end. But why? If I bumped up against something eventually, wouldn’t that have to be something in space? And if it was in space wouldn’t there have to be something on the other side of it if only more space? On the other hand, if there was no limit, endless space couldn’t just be, anymore than endless time could.[/b]

So, you tell me: What is he missing here?

How does one not go back and forth with so much crucial information still far, far out of reach.

“Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?”
Dr. Michael Shermer in Skeptic magazine

This part gets particularly surreal. First there’s the part about nothing at all existing. Then there’s the part about encompassing this if there are no conscious minds around to encompass it. The only thing more surreal [perhaps] is the part where something is around but there are no conscious minds around to encompass that. If for example Earth is the only planet with intelligent life and next week a gigantic asteroid from space wipes it out.

Sans God what is to be made of somethingness then?

And, like Hawking, Shermer will almost certainly go to his own grave equally perplexed. As will you and I and everyone else reading these words. The only real distinction here being that some will be more perturbed by it than others. Another mystery embedded in “I”: dasein.

Just to toss one more hat into this ring and see if there were any legitimate arguments.

“Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?”
Dr. Michael Shermer in Skeptic magazine

What this brings me back to over and over and over again is the inherently mysterious relationship between existence and the perception of existence. Are there parallel universes where intelligent beings are actually able to explain or to “resolve” this? What is either Existence or No Existence without minds able to make such a distinction? Other than to assume the existence of God?

Then this part:

Here too some argue that the only explanation can be God. But that just brings me around to pondering whether God created these conditions out of nothing at all or whether these conditions were necessary even for the existence of God. Out of something that ever and always just…was?

God again, right? Sans God, we can only endlessly ponder whether somethingness includes a teleological component that necessarily leads to the evolution of matter into mind into conscious reflections on all of this actually able to go back to grappling with the existence of existence itself.

Then it’s back to Magee above.

Unless someone here is able to link us to the very “latest” speculations on all of this.