To see how I got there, follow these 3 simple steps:

1) Why is there something rather than nothing?

…seems to mean:

What is the reason that there exists a thing that exists instead of a thing that doesn’t exist?

Answer: if anything exists, it’s going to be a thing that exists, not a thing that doesn’t exist.

Obviously in that form it’s a trivial question with a trivial answer, so let’s get rid of “nothing” (it’s just a red herring) and reduce the question to:

2) Why do things exist?

…meaning:

What is the ultimate (ontological rather than historical) reason that things exist?

…which is clearly “begging the question”. We haven’t established that there is any ultimate reason that things exist, or that there is any reason to assume there is any such reason. So we really need to ask:

3) Is there any reason to assume there is any ultimate reason that things exist?

The answer appears to be:

No.

Bubblecar said:

To see how I got there, follow these 3 simple steps:

1) Why is there something rather than nothing?

…seems to mean:

What is the reason that there exists a thing that exists instead of a thing that doesn’t exist?

Answer: if anything exists, it’s going to be a thing that exists, not a thing that doesn’t exist.

Obviously in that form it’s a trivial question with a trivial answer, so let’s get rid of “nothing” (it’s just a red herring) and reduce the question to:

2) Why do things exist?

…meaning:

What is the ultimate (ontological rather than historical) reason that things exist?

…which is clearly “begging the question”. We haven’t established that there is any ultimate reason that things exist, or that there is any reason to assume there is any such reason. So we really need to ask:

3) Is there any reason to assume there is any ultimate reason that things exist?

The answer appears to be:

No.

Have you just woken up Mr Car to find you have been sleeping on an empty whisky bottle again?

We’d need to build an intellect that could work out why the universe exists, the reason would be beyond our intellect , why does anything exist? It’s more than we can know – so we say because if god or aliens or a Big Bang , it nearly puts the whole thing in a bag and we can rest easy

Good analysis.

I agree with the conclusion.

I was sitting up at the Redoubt the other nigh and looking at the stars, pondering the imponderables like so many men must have done down the ages, I’m armed with more knowledge than them to ponder the imponderables only because that knowledge was gained from earlier men who pondered the imponderables but I’m really no closer to understanding it all than they were.
I think that’s the way God wants it.

> Why is there something rather than nothing? The answer is….

… complicated.

An analogous question is “why is there life?”

Think about it. The probability that life-as-we-know-it with nucleic acids and proteins all together in the right place and the right time to reproduce accurately is vanishingly small. It couldn’t happen. The only way that life-as-we-know-it could exist is if it slowly evolved from non-life.

So let’s take that answer and apply it first back to the question “why is there a universe?” It’s widely known that the universe-as-we-know-it is metastable. Give it a kick in the wrong place and it changes into some entirely different form of universe. The only way I, and many cosmologists, think the universe could have come about is through continued evolution from less stable states.

So let’s finish the equation of Douglas Adams’ “Life, the universe and everything” by going back to the original question “why is there something rather than nothing?”. Could it be that the same answer applies a third time? ie. there is a sequence of states between “nothing” and “something” that allows “nothing” to slowly evolve into “something”?

Possibly. And if so then that nicely destroys Bubblecar’s original argument. Bubblecar assumed that “something” was like a light switch, it is either off or on. But we already know from a solution of the “go back in time and shoot your grandfather” paradox that a light switch, or the trigger of a gun, can get stuck part way between off and on. A coin falling on its edge might not be likely, but it is possible. And that allows the possibility of an evolution of states from “nothing” to “something”.

:-)

>ie. there is a sequence of states between “nothing” and “something” that allows “nothing” to slowly evolve into “something”?

Nothing can’t “do” anything. You talk of nothing “slowly evolving”, but as soon you introduce time, slow or fast, you’re talking about something. “Nothing”, in the absolute sense used in this context, is the complete absence of any properties or characteristics. Not only is it not real, it’s not even imaginary. It’s just a human linguistic error to talk of the “existence of nothing” :)

> we already know from a solution of the “go back in time and shoot your grandfather” paradox that a light switch, or the trigger of a gun, can get stuck part way between off and on.

The quantum mechanical equivalent of that is of course Schrodinger’s Cat. A superposition of two states “nothing” and “something” exists simultaneously, which allows the probability of “something” existing to increase slowly without negating the possibility that “nothing” might be the outcome.

>You talk of nothing “slowly evolving”, but as soon as you introduce time, slow or fast, you’re talking about something

…or change of any kind. Nothing can’t change, because it’s not there to change :)

Change can only occur if there’s a capacity for change (a capacity change for change is something).

Bubblecar said:

Change can only occur if there’s a capacity for change (a capacity change for change is something).

Mangled that one (I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be cleaning the bath).

Change can only occur if there’s a capacity for change (a capacity for change is something).

> It’s just a human linguistic error to talk of the “existence of nothing”

Reminds me of the days before the 9th century AD. Before then, zero was thought not to be a number because “nothing” couldn’t exist. Nowadays, even bubblecar is happy to accept that zero is a number.

mollwollfumble said:

> It’s just a human linguistic error to talk of the “existence of nothing”

Reminds me of the days before the 9th century AD. Before then, zero was thought not to be a number because “nothing” couldn’t exist. Nowadays, even bubblecar is happy to accept that zero is a number.

Zero is a number, but the non-existence of anything isn’t the existence of something.

Bubblecar said:

mollwollfumble said:

> It’s just a human linguistic error to talk of the “existence of nothing”

Reminds me of the days before the 9th century AD. Before then, zero was thought not to be a number because “nothing” couldn’t exist. Nowadays, even bubblecar is happy to accept that zero is a number.

Zero is a number, but the non-existence of anything isn’t the existence of something.

mollwollfumble said:

… complicated.

An analogous question is “why is there life?”

I don’t think it is complicated, and I don’t think it is an analogous question at all.

Given a sufficiently large universe full of stuff that has the potential to form itself into life, then life is likely to happen, so the answer to the question “why is there life?” is that the conditions of the Universe allow it. There is no corresponding meaningful non-circular answer to the question “why is there something?”

I think molly’s making the usual mistake of imagining a set of minimal properties that can develop greater complexity over time and calling that “nothing”, rather than “a set of minimal properties that can develop greater complexity over time”.

I don’t think the question means anything.

But does it mean nothing?

dv said:

I don’t think the question means anything.

It’s tautological.

>The answer appears to be:
No

.have noticed that things that happen, things that are, the now and before, and the yet to be, that these displace what may have been (instead), and the probability landscape is changed, so you know, wonder oN

Bubblecar said:

I think molly’s making the usual mistake of imagining a set of minimal properties that can develop greater complexity over time and calling that “nothing”, rather than “a set of minimal properties that can develop greater complexity over time”.

Any mistake I am making here is certainly not “usual”.

I’m just saying that considering the only possibilities as “nothing” or “something” is a sign of narrow-mindedness. Let’s take a very simple example well known to everyone, “the infinitesimal”, is that nothing or something? According to many people “the infinitesimal” is nothing, but according to many other people “the infinitesimal” is something. According to many people “zero” is nothing, but according to many other people “zero” is something. You get my point? Is the probability wave of Scrodinger “nothing” or “something”? Again you’ll find some people on both sides to say that it is “nothing” or “something”. In the mathematical bootstrapping necessary for developing the integers from “nothing”, the value zero is allocated to the null set 0 = {} which contains nothing, and the integer 1 allocated to the set containing only zero, 1 = {0}.

I claim that there could be a gradation possible between “nothing” and “something”.

mollwollfumble said:

I claim that there could be a gradation possible between “nothing” and “something”.

If there are properties present, we’re talking “something”. There can be no physical state in which there are no properties present. As I said before, such an idea is not even imaginary – it’s just an error of language.

Bubblecar said:

mollwollfumble said:

I claim that there could be a gradation possible between “nothing” and “something”.

If there are properties present, we’re talking “something”. There can be no physical state in which there are no properties present. As I said before, such an idea is not even imaginary – it’s just an error of language.

But can’t we measure “absence of”? We can certainly measure “presence of” in many cases.

Michael V said:

Bubblecar said:

mollwollfumble said:

I claim that there could be a gradation possible between “nothing” and “something”.

If there are properties present, we’re talking “something”. There can be no physical state in which there are no properties present. As I said before, such an idea is not even imaginary – it’s just an error of language.

But can’t we measure “absence of”? We can certainly measure “presence of” in many cases.

If we can measure anything, we’re measuring something :)

Molly wants “something” to emerge from “nothing”. But if this supposed “nothing” has the potential to change into “something”, then obviously it has the characteristic of a potential for change, which means it’s not really “nothing”, which has no properties at all.

The moral of the tale is very simple indeed: there is no such thing as nothing :)

• The moral of the tale is very simple indeed: there is no such thing as nothing

The human mind is not capable to grasp the concept of nothing just like it really cannot fathom infinity. Both these things are just words to a human mind but that does not mean they are non existent…

furious said:

• The moral of the tale is very simple indeed: there is no such thing as nothing

The human mind is not capable to grasp the concept of nothing just like it really cannot fathom infinity. Both these things are just words to a human mind but that does not mean they are non existent…

You’ve got it backwards. “Nothing” in an absolute sense, is an error of human language that causes all sorts of cognitive confusion, but (by definition) doesn’t exist outside of the human mind.

Because we make it so.

Nothing is what you experience after you die…

furious said:

Nothing is what you experience after you die…

You do understand though, that after you die you no longer exist as a being capable of experience. That’s why there’s “nothing” :)

• You do understand though, that after you die you no longer exist as a being capable of experience. That’s why there’s “nothing” :)

Nothing is also what you experience after I die…

furious said:

• You do understand though, that after you die you no longer exist as a being capable of experience. That’s why there’s “nothing” :)

Nothing is also what you experience after I die…

No, sorry, there’s no way out. Nothing doesn’t exist, which is what we mean by the word.

I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space except I keep banging my head.

Bubblecar said:

I don’t understand what you are talking about Mr Car, but I do love Grumpy Cat.