Why Does the Universe Exist?
By Derek Parfit
Suppose we could actually answer questions like this? And, if you conclude [as I do] that, in our own lifetime, the odds that we ever will are staggeringly remote, why would you waste even a minute more of your time in pursuit of them?
Exactly: Because that is just one more example of the same sort of question.
We are endowed by nature with a brain able to ask them. Some do, some don’t. And, to me, the rest is no more or no less the embodiment of dasein than the quandaries we confront in the is/ought world.
And, presuming some measure of autonomy, what can possibly be a greater mystery that minds can grapple with than these two: why something instead of nothing? why this something and not another something altogether?
If nothing else you can take some sort of comfort in knowing that until we have the answers to imponderables on this scale, the ones we pursue that are considerably more down to earth are not likely to produce answers not enveloped in that intellectual grand canyon between what we think we know about anything and all that would need to be known about everything in order to be sure of anything and everything at all.
You know, for those among us – the objectivists – foolish enough to actually believe that doesn’t matter.
Of course aren’t we all basically still in the same boat here? Because there does not appear to an explanation – scientific, philosophical, theological – for the existence of either God or of existence, this speculation in and of itself is just another manifestation of that. Especially given that we don’t know beyond all doubt if even asking and answering the questions themselves are or are not but an inherent adjunct of this overarching “causal law”.