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Why is there something rather than nothing?

I get what you're saying and I can certainly appreciate it myself. Also props for having read the Monadology. However, the answer that satisfies the mystic may not be the one that satisfies the layman. The fact that I am here to ask the question "why am I here" still gives no insight as to why I'm here. It simply acknowledges the fact that I am here, which I already know...which is why I am asking the question. Again, I completely understand the direction you are coming from. I'm just trying to expand on other avenues when one might not work for all. Regards sir
 
I agree, rephrasing the question as 'Why am I here?', personalises what is a fairly dry metaphysical question of 'why something, rather than nothing?'

Some devote their lives to the latter formulation, and are found drinking lots of coffee in the Academy.

Others, I assume yourself included devote their lives to the former. Your formulation is what keeps me awake at night, seeking answers that I can only grasp at, fleetingly. As words fail me so one turns to the 'language' of the Magus - myth, parable, creative art - and that seemingly infinite resource that is the human imagination - I certainly get where you are coming from.

PAX
 
Pythagoras said:
Your idea is either rubbish, or so inspired that you are unable to communicate it to anyone.
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the paradoxes in his posts are so obvious it hurts. which doesn't bother me an sich; but then he ruins it by assuming and confidently stating he killed the paradox. and that that be the genius of it! while it actually just bested him! im just trying to show him its alive and well, because:

Pythagoras said:
Philosophical paradoxes are like the pearl, the grail, the key. Archetypes of unspeakable truths - they make life worth living
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his thinking wouldn't be there without them. one should give credit to the paradox that sparkled and keeps pushing ones thinking ever beyond any limits. they really are the engine of creation. the moment he says 'i killed the paradox!' his thinking and development stops. and thats a shame. i'd even go as far as to say its insulting to the paradox.

the hubris!

you have the pacience of a saint but Joaxx wont let you play Socrates beffudles
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:( =D
 
jocaxx said:
From nothing (NJ) -> randonly things -> laws -> logical rules (physical laws ) -> Life
[emphasis added -Heuristic]
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jocaxx said:
I don not say *what* is the probability from an element pop into existence from JN.
But there is some probabilities of course since there is no restriction rules at all. [Emphasis added -H]
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Do you see a problem?
 
Jocaxx, meet Socrates.

Don't infer anything from these statement, please take it as read.

I think you have an obvious passion for philosophy, paradoxes etc, and in that I would think most of your interlocutors on this thread share that passion.

What you have to understand is that there are basic axioms, assumptions and 'rules of engagement' (for want of a better term) that underpin even the most metaphysical and ontological of questions. Take that passion, and perhaps read the work of other philosophers (through journals or popular books) who have auto-discombobulated on the topic, and yet retained the discipline to work out the formal logic, presented it to colleagues, friends and fellow travellers looking for unmitigating criticism, a through a dialogical project refine the idea, and either abandon it, or built it up with refutation of all possible objection (read Aquinas to see the strength of this method, in this case written refutations, rather than a strict dialogue).

Your passion is explicitly obvious. Perhaps look up the Socratic quote I gave you (The Apology, Plato and see that you may indeed have the seed of a revolutionary idea, which might come to nought because you couldm't communicate it via a 'philosophic proof'.:D



Now, if you are wanting to 'rewrite the book' of Western thought and its various tools, I suggest you start by googling 'metaphilosophy' - but I warn you, its a very deep rabbit hole, often reserved for those that find vanilla-philosophy too easy8o8o

PS - I think you should show a modicum of appreciation for those that have taken the time to engage with you (and maybe start by refuting some objections)

I look forward to your formalised presentation, if one is forthcoming - you could even write a paper/essay??

FIAT LUX
 
I think a very important thing to consider is: Without the mind (of anything, not just human) would anything exist?

Without something to recognise anything, does it exist?
 
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EasyStreet said:
I think a very important thing to consider is: Without the mind (of anything, not just human) would anything exist?

Without something to recognise anything, does it exist?
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Just because I can't perceive it doesn't mean it doesn't exist independently of my consciousness.

A blind man can't perceive color, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I understand this is because there are other people with eyesight to tell the blind man it's there, but that's beside the point. Even if everyone in the world was blind, color would still exist whether or not we could ever know of its existence.
 
Just because I can't perceive it doesn't mean it doesn't exist independently of my consciousness.

A blind man can't perceive color, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I understand this is because there are other people with eyesight to tell the blind man it's there, but that's beside the point. Even if everyone in the world was blind, color would still exist whether or not we could ever know of its existence.
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I'm with you on mind-independent reality, but not on colour. Colour isn't an inherent property of an object, it's a property of our experience. Things have a mass, size, shape etc. without observation (I think it's pretty anthropocentric to try and deny that), but in a world without trichomate observers colour just isn't there, at least not as we perceive it. The object still reflects light at a certain wavelength; but it isn't red. Redness is a quale, a mental product. There are, presumably, possible worlds in which people perceive in colours we can't see (at least w/o drugs) like grorange and blellow; those colours don't exist in our world, though. Grorangeness is a secondary property that an object only gains through perception.
 
Yerg said:
I'm with you on mind-independent reality, but not on colour. Colour isn't an inherent property of an object, it's a property of our experience. Things have a mass, size, shape etc. without observation (I think it's pretty anthropocentric to try and deny that), but in a world without trichomate observers colour just isn't there, at least not as we perceive it. The object still reflects light at a certain wavelength; but it isn't red. Redness is a quale, a mental product. There are, presumably, possible worlds in which people perceive in colours we can't see (at least w/o drugs) like grorange and blellow; those colours don't exist in our world, though. Grorangeness is a secondary property that an object only gains through perception.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I was looking to just make a quick example so I didn't much think it through.
 
I'll have to read/think more deeply on this most intriguing and valuable JN bizz-nass prior to reply, but:

teh wood said:
Infinity is nothing and everything at the same time. Hell is not so much a place of fire and brimstone, but separation from God. God is infinite, and God is our physical universe and beyond. Therefore, assimilation with infinity is to become God or become a part of God, and to not-exist is hell.
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I'm with you on this spiritual take, for the most part, but there are some key clarifications to add...I think it's key that we hold to embracing the original contradiction of infinity.

Tentatively:

God = the everything = nothing (as nonexistent, as prior to and underlying 'everything').
God = the constellation of conditions delineating the 'shape' of what can possibly be, yet in encompassing being, fails to itself be.

The individual being (like a single human) = the everything acting to come to know itself (albeit by taking on finite-ness) = the emergence of 'a something' out of the everything/nothing = contingent actualities arising of the necessity dictated by the conditions of possibility for the actual.

Thus, insofar as God is all, God does not 'exist'. As a corollary, if we take God as 'the nothing', it functions to undergird all 'somethings' that emerge. (okay, so this repeats a bit)

So what is hell? I don't think that it's too useful a concept, but either
1. As bullshit, a way that religions keep people in 'their place' or
2. More validly, an allegory for the agony of our existence as finite and contingent.

Accordingly, heaven would be reunion with the nothing/everything (ie, satori).
...
I think that much of the debate turns on how we define "to exist" and "nothing".

ebola
 
Wow ebola, that's very nicely put.

One point, though: I've always philosophically connected 'hell' to alienation, to separateness. It's the feeling of being an island, cut off fundamentally from anything outside of you. It is, in this way, the exact inverse of heaven, which is, as you allude to, reconnection.
 
^ Yeah I'd go along with that line of thinking - god both something and nothing - or have I fundamentally misunderstood ?
 
Wow ebola, that's very nicely put.
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Thanks. I had enough THC in my brain then to lack knowledge of whether I was making sense. :)

One point, though: I've always philosophically connected 'hell' to alienation, to separateness. It's the feeling of being an island, cut off fundamentally from anything outside of you. It is, in this way, the exact inverse of heaven, which is, as you allude to, reconnection.
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I concur...and well put too. The irony, though, is that it is through alienation that relation has meaning; that is, while the everything/nothing simply is, constituted solely by its own conditions, and thus 'solitarity', our partially illusory disconnection, as finite 'somethings', sets the whole pursuit of connection in motion.
 
^ Thanks dude. I thought of this one memorable time when a nursing home patient of mine, who was blind, incontinent, and had no living friends left, burst into tears and wailed, 'It's hell to be alone!'

Later, when I got more into mysticism, I realized that what she said was kind of a truism.
 
Tunnelfission said:
I am radically grateful that there is something rather than nothing.
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You wouldn't know the difference if there was nothing.

This is my take...

The multiverse is a living continuous random probability function. An extension of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. A fractal of infinite dimensions and existences. The fabric of space (nothingness) can layer, and create dimensions. The interaction between them drive physical properties like gravity and quantum electrodynamics, which binds, creates, and moves everything. It all vibrates at the atomic level, and the vibration will always start. Its some sort of function of vacuum energy. An infinite growing loop where vacuum energy drives a singularity, creating infinite inflation... which cools to nothingness... vacuum energy increases.... a singularity... infinite inflation.... repeat. This means multiple universes (infinite universes) exist, but are causally separated.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy
 
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