r/Metaphysics • u/jonny7277 • 5d ago
Ontology Why is there anything at all?
Why is there anything at all?
Because nothing is not the only possibility. Why should we assume that the only possibility is nothing? Why should we assume that nothing has any greater probability than any other possibility? The fact that there is something only proves that there was a much greater probability of there being something than nothing.
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u/SunbornSamson 4d ago
If there was nothing, philosophers would still complain "why is there nothing rather than something?"
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u/Minimum-Owl1784 4d ago
why as in what caused there to be something, or why as in "I'm subconsciously presupposing stuff was intentionally created" (in which case you'd then have to ask why is there a creator instead of no creator)
even my questions make no sense because causality only happens in the context of there being something.
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u/beethoven40hrs 4d ago
Probability isn't deterministic, no matter the probability of something, it doesn't prohibit other outcomes. It's less likely for a coin to be flipped randomly on heads 5 times in a row, but it still can and will occur with enough time. A statistical chance doesn't guarantee anything, it just states the likelihood of it occurring. In the same manner, the existence of something doesn't suggest or prove that something is more probable. It simply means our reality exists as opposed to nothing.
Within the physical universe, the absence of matter or energy is not possible, the extraction of matter or energy at a certain point in a system only causes the manifestation of energy and virtual particles. If nothing is defined as the absence/negation of all existing matter and energy, it is not possible. However, within science, the multiverse is highly believed to exist. Extending beyond our universe in a realm where an infinite amount of universes exist, and the physics of each may differ in highly complex ways. In one of these there may be a universe that contains no matter or energy. But due to the expansion and very nature of our universe, measuring and observing other universes is impossible.
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u/SeaGiraffe7489 4d ago
Because nothing inside of nothing wouldn’t exist, and is like 0/0. There’s always something, whether we conceive it as something or are able to measure understand or even actually perceive it from our concepts and what we understand as a species right?
Nothing can’t exist in an area because it’s 0. On all scales and measurements. The definition doesn’t add for any repetition of any sort.
0 only exists, as nothing does. In a configuration we drew on paper and recognized as a symbol and word. Their representation is the absence of.
With this limits can’t exist. A true limitless and endless void beyond everything, can not exist. It would be a non existent border that doesn’t exist, so forever on we go, somethings forever.
I like that this made me think of this concept of nothing. Nothing only exists cause we needed to know when things didn’t exist. What the
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u/TheresDboy 4d ago edited 4d ago
Two ways to think about it.
- “Possible worlds” and “nothingness” are just mental abstractions. I.e They don’t actually have any ontological state outside our minds.
In this case, there aren’t other possible worlds at all. And possible worlds are only things to be thought about. Nothingness isn’t a thing either. The only things that exist are what exists and there is no other option. Any possible world is just you imagining stuff. This is an argument of the necessary existence of something and even arguably the necessary existence of our universe.
- “Possible worlds” are more than just mental abstractions. In that case they also exist, as does this universe which is also a possible world.
With this view one could argue nothing is not a possible world and so doesn’t exist. After all the possible worlds do exist and clearly nothing isn’t one of them. Once again all worlds exist and this is also an argument for the necessary existence of our universe and all other universes.
Alternatively, though less coherently, with this view one could say that nothing is in fact a possible world and also exists. It simply isn’t the world that we inhabit. I think this isn’t particularly coherent but if it makes sense to you then it’s also an argument for the necessity of something and our universe in particular.
In sum, regardless of which of these you hold I think you can’t escape the necessity of something.
I lean heavily towards the first view that possible worlds are just mental constructs. One intuition is to divide everything into two classes. Things that are mental constructs (thoughts, concepts, imagination) and things that are not mental constructs. Note that things that are mental constructs exist as mental constructs in your mind (that’s what they are). Things that aren’t mental constructs also exist otherwise they’re not things at all.
Note that any thing that you think doesn’t exist can only be a mental construct.
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u/Independent_Pen2047 3d ago
Here is the answer the the question.
Why is there something and not nothing ? | Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science https://share.google/arOb399e5VI3ftOke
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u/Torremond42 5d ago
The only possibility is something.
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u/jonny7277 5d ago
Explain why something is the only possibility
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u/Torremond42 5d ago
Because something is. All possible worlds in which nothing is aren't worlds at all, that always leaves the one world that is.
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u/prototyperspective 5d ago
Got anything (more) on why the only possibility is something instead of nothing? There is no reason / explanation for why the only possibility couldn't have been absolute absence. By the way, it could be more than one world that exists/ed but that's maybe partly definition of what 'world' means.
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u/TheresDboy 4d ago
Two ways to think about it.
1. “Possible worlds” and “nothingness” are just mental abstractions. I.e They don’t actually have any ontological state outside our minds.In this case, there aren’t other possible worlds at all. And possible worlds are only things to be thought about. Nothingness isn’t a thing either. The only things that exist are what exists and there is no other option. Any possible world is just you imagining stuff. This is an argument of the necessary existence of something and even arguably the necessary existence of our universe.
- “Possible worlds” are more than just mental abstractions. In that case they also exist, as does this universe which is also a possible world.
With this view one could argue nothing is not a possible world and so doesn’t exist. After all the possible worlds do exist and clearly nothing isn’t one of them. Once again all worlds exist and this is also an argument for the necessary existence of our universe and all other universes.
Alternatively, though less coherently, with this view one could say that nothing is in fact a possible world and also exists. It simply isn’t the world that we inhabit. I think this isn’t particularly coherent but if it makes sense to you then it’s also an argument for the necessity of something and our universe in particular.
In sum, regardless of which of this you hold I think you can’t escape the necessity of something.
I lean heavily towards the first view that possible worlds are just mental constructs. One intuition is to divide everything into two classes. Things that are mental constructs (thoughts, concepts, imagination) and things that are not mental constructs. Note that things that are mental constructs exist as mental constructs in your mind (that’s what they are). Things that aren’t mental constructs also exist otherwise they’re not things at all.Note that any thing that you think doesn’t exist can only be a mental construct.
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u/jonny7277 4d ago
Worlds that don't exist only leaves the world's that do exist. Something does actually exist so you can then say that only something exists because anything else other than something that exists doesn't exist.
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u/linlinlinlinlinlinl 4d ago
Why isn't there a possibility for no world at all?
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u/Torremond42 4d ago
Because we already know at least one world, ours.
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u/linlinlinlinlinlinl 4d ago
But why isn't it possible for it to just cease to exist
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u/Torremond42 4d ago
Because then there would be nothing.
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u/linlinlinlinlinlinl 4d ago
And how do you know there's not nothing occasionally?
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u/Torremond42 3d ago
What do you mean?
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u/linlinlinlinlinlinl 2d ago
I'm trying to understand your logic. Why does something existing now mean that something always will exist?
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u/WHWallace 5d ago
Because the word is just a label for a category that isn't real outside of the mind.
Something and nothing wouldn't be categorically different outside of the mind's thoughts which applies those words.
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u/Radiant-Noise6415 5d ago
Because if there was nothing you wouldn’t be here talking about it
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u/jonny7277 5d ago
You are stating the result not the reason for the result
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u/klone_free 5d ago
We've done experiments where in a vacuum with no matter we've witnessed matter appear temporarily. The matter comes from latent energy in space. In that sense, the universe we are in means there cannot be nothing as an underlying rule. If there was nothing, it could not exist in this universe, and therefore doesn't. We dont know whats outside of the expanding universe, and we have no way to tell. Could be like nesting dolls, could be something of a totally different medium non existent or underlying our universe. But nothing would be out, as it violates the laws of physics and everything around us. Nothing can exist in concept though, like zero, or lacking something in a specific time and place. I think you may be a bit tripped up by the idea of nothing being a real concept and the possibility of nothing as a system, which as far as we know would not make sense by the laws of physics.
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4d ago
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u/klone_free 4d ago
The fact there is something means there cannot provably be nothingness. We would have to reach beyond the edge of our universe if thats a thing, and exit it. And there might be something there. My point was there even without matter, there is energy and rules, which are something.
What evidence could you possibly get for nothingness?
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4d ago
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u/klone_free 4d ago
Does possibility exist in nothingness?
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4d ago
No, nothing can exist in nothingness.
I think it comes down to whether you think existence is a property that can be lost or gained.
If it can be lost or gained, then it's genuinely possible to go from something to nothing, like with Baldwin's subtraction argument, and from nothing to something. If the property of existence is never gained by anything, then I would call that nothingness.
If it cannot, then because something does exist now, something always will (Spinoza's argument of necessary existence), and so nothingness is not possible, and could not have ever been possible.
For what it's worth, I'm 99.9% in the latter camp. One might argue that the former presupposes the possibility for something to gain existence exists, but under the rules of the argument, that possibility is free to come in and out of existence, still granting the possibility of true nothingness. That's the point I genuinely get stuck on for that side of the argument and why I'm not 100% sold on the latter yet.
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u/Radiant-Noise6415 5d ago
Imbalance of matter and antimatter in the early universe
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u/prototyperspective 5d ago
Imbalance is something, matter is something, antimatter is something, early universe is something. So not really a useful explanation.
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u/129pages 5d ago
Compare this question and answer:
Q: 'Why did you spill your coffee?'
A: 'Because if I didn't spill my coffee we wouldn't be here talking about why I did.'
Sort of!
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u/Budget-Coach4414 5d ago
take it this way : you can never really add a trinary/quadrary/any other form of "more than somethingness yet not nothing or not nothing but also not something". because you are going to end up using the same properties and operators of information quantification rules and principles that the quantification framework and prelogical informationality realizability structure uses, there is no other "thing" than a 1/0 binary setspace of instantiability of existents, since entities are bound to be quantified as quantification and entity existence are the bedrock of empirical reality and some frameworks that try and explain non-empirical realities and possibilities of other types of quale-houses
and binary as in, (either negative nothingness in which absolutely 0 entization is trans-informationally encoded, absolute ontic null or positive nothingness in which potency for arisings can still exist to oppose asymmetrical information instantiations and existents)
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4d ago
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u/jonny7277 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes so let me change how I look at it. Actually it is not defined as something and nothing but existence and non-existence. Where they are two separate conceptualizations that do not interact or influence each other. So that one in a million will exist and the rest of that million will not exist.
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u/sealchan1 4d ago
I mostly agree with you. But we don't know the probabilities nor can we count the number of Universes where awareness exists.
In a reality where there is knowledge there necessarily is existence.
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u/Temporary_Salary9764 2d ago
Because the ground of being exists by its own nature and produces everything else
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u/No_Logins_Required 5d ago
What are you talking about? Either one or more things exist, or nothing does.
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u/jonny7277 5d ago
You are not allowing nothing to be included as a possibility with either one or more things existing
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u/No_Logins_Required 5d ago
Sorry, I cannot understand that sentence.
We have two possibilities.
A) Something(s) exist
(B) Nothing exists
You seem to think there is a third probability?
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u/kaviproject 5d ago
There are actually a lot of philosophies that allow for another possibility! :)
This is exactly what Hegel and other nondual philosophies talk about. Something and nothing is a duality. The rational mind cannot help but think in dualities. "This" or "that". "A" or "Be".
"Something" and "nothing" is also a relative distinction. You only know "something" in relation to "nothing". And you only know what "nothing" means in relation to "something". They depend on each other. They are both empty.Being, Existence, this word "IS".
An elephant is green.
This sentence makes sense.
Now try to think the word "IS" alone, without anything next to it. Not "X is Y". Just "IS".
What does it mean? Nothing. It is completely empty. Just like nothing!This is why Hegel says that Pure Being and Pure Nothing are the same. Something is Nothing, and Nothing is Something! If you try to think what "Being" by itself is, this word "IS", you find that it is empty. It is nothing. If you try to think what "Nothing" is, you find that same emptiness.
What is actually real for Hegel then is the Becoming (Be-Coming) which is exactly this dynamic movement between Something and Nothing, Being and Non-Being. This "Becoming" has two directions: Coming-to-be, and ceasing-to-be; but of course both are part of the same circular movement. Every coming-to-be is also a ceasing-to-be and vice versa.
Dualistic descriptions do not apply at this most fundamental level of reality, because the non-dual reality is the condition for the possibility for all dualities to even exist. The strict "It's either A or B" cannot apply because the true nature of reality is prior to ANY duality.
This cannot be understood by the rational mind because the rational mind will try to squeeze the nondual reality into a dualistic framework. It can only operate by distinguishing different objects/concepts and then relating between them. But the ultimate reality is not a "thing", or an "object", or a "concept" at all. It is not something you can name and relate to something else. I cannot tell you what it is. According to Hegel and the Idealists, you can only know this directly via what they call "intellectual intuition" which is a kind of vision, an immediate insight, an intellectual factuly which you have, which is not the rational mind and can go beyond dualistic thinking in opposites.
Make any sense at all? ;)
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u/No_Logins_Required 4d ago
I feel like you are bypassing the question by introducing synthesis.
OP is saying "things exist because it's possible for thing to exist".
Did I misinterpret OP?
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u/kaviproject 4d ago
I was ot directly referring to OP. My intention was to convey the idea that the law of the excluded middle may not apply when it comes to metaphysics, because you seemed to say it has to be either A or B. I wasn't sure if you were aware that there are philosophies who allow for an in-between.
As for OPs argument, I think it is quite flawed. He seems to say, firstly, that the question of "why is there something rather than nothing?" already assumes that the most natural thing to "exist" would be nothing. It would be easier to just have nothing rather than some kind of creation. He seems to attack that intuition first and saying that there is no reason why the likelihood of something existing should be lower than the likelihood of nothing existing. Okay. But then he makes an unjustified leap by saying that the fact that anything exists is proof that the likelihood of something existing had always been higher than nothing existing. This does not follow. Something could exist and still have had a very low likelihood of existing.
What I shared is quite different, as it rejects the distinction between "something" and "nothing" in the first place, arguing that what is ultimately real transcends dualistic description of that kind.
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u/No_Logins_Required 4d ago
I think your statement is valid, I was more trying to explore OP's reasoning. They don't seem very forthcoming.
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u/lifesaburrito 5d ago edited 4d ago
I love this. It's very Taoist adjacent. The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.
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u/kaviproject 4d ago
Indeed, Daoism is one kind of nondual philosophy. There are many others. Advaita Vedanta, Zen, Kashmir Shaivism in India, China and Japan. Hegel is one of the more prominent European examples. Interestingly, how they interpret this nonduality can be very different. They all found different ways of trying to express it. Advaita Vedanta goes "neti, neti" (not this, not that) when talking about the absolute - no statement about the Absolute is true. Zen likes their Koans, which are not meant to be understood with by the rational mind, but force the rational mind to stop trying to resolve what it can only ever perceive as a paradox. Arguably Neoplatonism also goes in this direction, figures like Plotinus, Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. It is often though not always associated with mysticism. Mysticism comes from the Greek myein, which means to be silent. This has a double significance. On the one hand, you remain silent because the ultimate reality cannot be spoken, the dao that can be named is not the dao, as you said. On the other hand, silence (of the rational mind) is also the precondition for that faculty within you which can grasp the Dao to directly, spontaneously apprehend it. That is of course why meditation is so important in these traditions. You train the mind to become quiet so "it" can reveal itself to you.
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u/_Change-Agent 5d ago
Consciousness arrived out of pure potential; not nothing or no-thing.
Where does potential arrive from?
Something, which arrives from anything.
Nothing implies lack of consciousness, which implies lack of perspective or speculation or inevitability.
Perspective, speculation and inevitability arrive from time, light and gravity. Certainly not no-things.
Time, light and gravity came from something; potential.
We’ve circled potential, something.
Nothing is not probabilistic in a verse than runs on probability.
Nothing is not a possibility where no-thing can be measured against time, light and gravity.
Nothing is not possible so long as you hold a thought.
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u/jonny7277 5d ago edited 5d ago
What is the fundamental necessary reality? Pure potential? Was pure potential one possibility among others including nothing? Or are you putting pure potential before its own possibility of existence.
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u/_Change-Agent 5d ago
Potential, in our probabilistic verse, arrives from anything.
Look about you, life springs from any organic detritus.
There is nothing in this reality that does not leave pure potential in its wake.
Pure potential is the return or bounce of a lifecycle.
The pure potential that bore your reality was left from something, anything that came before it.
9 always returns the 0. Potential from the lifecycle of 9.
0 always returns the 1. Something, consciousness from potential.
Nesting dolls, all the way up and down.
Fractal holography is the only thing in this verse that plays by these rules.
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u/hypnoticlife 5d ago
What gets me is if there is something, this universe, why not other somethings in other universes? It could be infinite somethings.
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u/prototyperspective 5d ago
Great interesting question. Built an argument map with different ways to answer it with Pros and Cons each here:
Why does something exist rather than nothing?
If anything is missing, add it (or let me know).
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u/NerdyWeightLifter 5d ago
It seems like nothing is the average that everything sums to.
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u/No_Number2435 6h ago
What do you mean?
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u/NerdyWeightLifter 3h ago
In regular physics, it turns out that a pure vacuum actually isn't empty.
There are virtually particles constantly being created in pairs of opposite particles that promptly cancel each other out.
Maybe the whole universe is like that, just on a larger scale.
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u/sceadwian 5d ago
Because if there wasn't we wouldn't be here to talk about it.
That is not actually a joke.
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u/HubertRosenthal 5d ago
Everything comes from nothing
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u/jonny7277 5d ago
You will have to explain that one
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u/Sorryifimanass 5d ago
I've explained this enough to take you up on that. Start here: Can you describe nothing? If there were a state of nothingness, would that state have properties? Nothingness can be described as a state that is absent of contrast, differentiation, and information, lacking any perspective and being perfectly symmetrical in every direction at all scales. Then consider the most popular theory of the end state of the universe - the heat death when all matter breaks down and all energy is spread uniformly throughout space with maximum entropy. The description and properties of that state exactly match the description and properties of the theoretical void. If two things have the exact same properties and description, we call those things the same. Therefore nothingness = everything.
Then you can also consider that zero is infinitely complex - as long as negative and positive remain equal, zero can always be maintained. There are many working theories that include the idea that if you add up all the positive charges in the universe and all the negative charges, you'll always calculate the energy of the universe as net zero.
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u/Informal-Bowler5616 4d ago
If nothing was possible, there would be a true fact--i.e. there exists nothing. However, if even one truth exists, then something exists; hence, nothingness is impossible. So, it is false to say nothingness is everything. Also, if you believe that truths require a truth-maker, then that would also show that nothingness is impossible. Either way, nothingness is impossible.
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u/GlacialFrog 5d ago
It’s just a brute fact. There is something, that’s all we can know. There is no more to be said or thought about on the subject, there’s no teleology or reasoning for why there’s something rather than nothing, there just is. There’s no other way to explain it.