Nothingness – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

A Catalog of Possible Types of Response to ‘Why Is There Anything At All?’

By my count there are seven possible types of response to the above question, which I will call the Leibniz question. I will give them the following names: Rejectionism, Mysterianism, Brutalism, Theologism, Necessitarianism, Nomologism/Axiologism, and Cosmologism. As far as I can see, my typology, or rather my emendation of Rescher's typology, is exhaustive. All possible solutions must fall under one of these heads. You may send me an e-mail if you think that there is an eighth type of solution.

Either the Leibniz question is illegitimate, a pseudo-question, or it is a genuine question. If the former, then it cannot be answered and ought to be rejected. Following Rescher, we can call this first response

Rejectionism. The rejectionist rejects the question as ill-formed, as senseless. Compare the question, 'How fast does time flow?' The latter is pretty obviously a pseudo-question resting as it does on a false presupposition, namely, that time is a measurable process within time. Whatever time is, it is not a process in time. If it flows, it doesn't flow like a river at some measurable rate. One does not answer a pseudo-question; one rejects it. Same with such complex questions as 'When did you stop smoking dope?' The Leibniz question in its contrastive formulation — Why is there something rather than nothing? — may well be a pseudo-question. I gave an argument for this earlier.

If the the Leibniz question is legitimate, however, then it is either unanswerable or answerable. If unanswerable, then the question points to a mystery. We can call this response

Mysterianism. On this approach the question is held to be genuine, not pseudo as on the rejectionist approach, but unanswerable. The question has a clear sense and does not rest on any false presupposition. But no satisfying answer is available.

If the question is answerable, then there are five more possible responses.

Brutalism or Brute Fact Approach. On this approach there is no explanation as to why anything at all exists. It is a factum brutum. As Russell said in his famous BBC debate with the Jesuit Copleston, "The universe is just there, and that is all." (Caveat lector: Quoted from memory!) A brute fact may be defined as an obtaining state of affairs that obtains without cause and without reason. If the Principle of Sufficient Reason holds, then of course there are no brute facts. The principle in question, however, is contested.

Theologism or Theological Approach. There is a metaphysically necessary and thus self-explanatory being, God, whose existence and activity explains the existence of everything other than God. Why is there anything at all? Because everything is either self-explanatory (causa sui) or caused to exist by that which is self-explanatory.

Necessitarianism. On this approach, the metaphysical necessity that traditional theology ascribes to God is ascribed to the totality of existents: it exists as a matter of metaphysical necessity. It is necessary that there be some totality of existents or other, and (what's worse) that there be precisely this totality and no other. There is no real contingency. Contingency is merely epistemic. Why is there anything at all? Because it couldn't have been otherwise!

Nomologism/Axiologism. Theories of this type have been proposed by A. C. Ewing (Value and Reality, 1973), John Leslie (Universes, 1989), and Nicholas Rescher, The Riddle of Existence, 1984). I will provide a rough sketch of Rescher's approach.

For Rescher, there is a self-subsistent realm of real possibilities or "proto-laws" whose mode of being is independent of the existence of substances. This realm of real possibilities is not nothing, but it is not a realm of existents. Rescher's claim is that the proto-laws account for the existence of things "without being themselves embodied in some existing thing or things." (27) Some facts, e.g., that there are things (substances) at all, is "Grounded in the nature of possibility." (27) What is the nature of this grounding? R. speaks of "nomological causality" as opposed to "efficient causality." (21) Somehow — and I confess to finding this all rather murky — the proto-laws nomologically cause the existence of physical substances. How does this explain why there is something rather than nothing?

R. argues, p. 31: (a) If every R-possible world is F, then the actual world is F. (b) Every R-possible world is nonempty. Therefore, (c) The actual world is nonempty: there is something rather than nothing (31). That is, only nonempty worlds are really possible. As R. remarks, the reasoning here is like the ontological argument: only an actual God is really possible. Rescher's view seems to be that, while there is a plurality of possible worlds, there is no possible world empty of physical existents. But how does Rescher support premise (b): Every R-possible world is nonempty? He gives a ridiculous question-begging argument (p. 32) that I won't bother to reproduce.

Cosmologism. The above six approaches are listed by N. Rescher (The Riddle of Existence, 1984, Ch. 1). But I believe there is a seventh approach which I learned from my old friend Quentin Smith. (A later post will deal with this in detail.) On this approach the Leibniz question is genuine (contra Rejectionism) and has an answer (contra Mysterianism). Moreover, the answer has the form of an explanation (contra Brutalism). But the answer do not involve any necessary substance such as God, nor does it take the line that the universe itself exists of necessity. Nor does the answer ascribe any causal efficacy to abstract laws or values. The idea is that the universe has the resources to explain its own existence: it caused itself to exist. Roughly, everything (space-time, matter, laws) came into existence 13.7 billion years ago; it was caused to come into existence; but it was not caused to come into existence by anything distinct from the universe. How? Well, assume that the universe is just the sum total of its states. Assume further that if each state has an explanation, then this suffices as an explanation of the sum total of states. Now each state has a causal explanation in terms of an earlier state. There is no first state despite the fact that the universe is metrically finite in age: 13.7 billion years old. There is no first state because of the continuity of time and causation: for every state there are earlier states in its causal ancestry. Because every state has a cause, and the universe is just the sum-total of its states, the universe has a cause. But this cause is immanent to the universe. So the universe caused itself to exist!

Something and Nothing Again: Krauss Takes Another Stab at Defending His ‘Bait and Switch’

In the pages of Scientific American, Lawrence M. Krauss writes:

As a scientist, the fascination normally associated with the classically phrased question “why is there something rather than nothing?”, is really contained in a specific operational question. That question can be phrased as follows: How can a universe full of galaxies and stars, and planets and people, including philosophers, arise naturally from an initial condition in which none of these objects—no particles, no space, and perhaps no time—may have existed? Put more succinctly perhaps: Why is there ‘stuff’, instead of empty space? Why is there space at all? There may be other ontological questions one can imagine but I think these are the ‘miracles’ of creation that are so non-intuitive and remarkable, and they are also the ‘miracles’ that physics has provided new insights about, and spurred by amazing discoveries, has changed the playing field of our knowledge. That we can even have plausible answers to these questions is worth celebrating and sharing more broadly.

This paragraph is a perfect example of why I find Krauss exasperating. They guy seems incapable of thinking and writing clearly.

First of all, no one can have any objection to a replacement of the old Leibniz question — Why is there something rather than nothing? See On the Ultimate Origin of Things, 1697 — with a physically tractable question, a question of interest to cosmologists and one amenable to a physics solution. Unfortunately, in the paragraph above, Krauss provides two different replacement questions while stating, absurdly, that the second is a more succint version of the first:

K1. How can a physical universe arise from an initial condition in which there are no particles, no space and perhaps no time?

K2. Why is there 'stuff' instead of empty space?

These are obviously distinct questions. To answer the first one would have to provide an account of how the universe originated from nothing physical: no particles, no space, and "perhaps" no time. The second question would be easier to answer because it presupposes the existence of space and does not demand that empty space be itself explained.

Clearly, the questions are distinct. But Krauss conflates them. Indeed, he waffles between them, reverting to something like the first question after raising the second. To ask why there is something physical as opposed to nothing physical is quite different from asking why there is physical "stuff" as opposed to empty space.

One would think that a scientist, trained in exact modes of thought and research, would not fall into such a blatant confusion. Or if he is not confused 'in his own mind' why is he writing like a sloppy sophomore? Scientific American is not a technical journal, but it is certainly a cut or two above National Enquirer.

To make matters worse, Krauss then starts talking about the 'miracles' of creation. Talk of miracles, or even of 'miracles,' has no place in science. The point of science is to demystify the world, to give, as far as possible, a wholly naturalistic account of nature. It is a noble enterprise and ought to be pursued to the limit. But what is the point of bringing in a theological term with or without 'scare' quotes? The same goes for 'creation.' In his book he refers to the physical universe as creation. But creation implies a creator. Why the theological language? Is he trying to co-opt it? What game is he playing here? Whatever it is, it doesn't inspire confidence in anything he says.

Go back to my opening point. There can be no objection to a replacement of the Leibniz question with one or more physically tractable questions. Unfortunately, Krauss is not clearly doing this. He thinks he is answering the Leibniz question. But he waffles, and he shifts his ground, and he backtracks when caught out and criticized.

Whatever merit his book has in popularizing recent cosmology, it is otherwise worthless. The book is a miserable exercise in 'bait and switch.' From the very title (A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing), Krauss purports to be answering the old philosophical question using nothing but naturalistic means. But having baited us, he then switches and waffles and backtracks and plays semantic games.

The Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question and Contrastive Explanations

I argued yesterday that the following questions are distinct:

   Q1. Why does anything at all exist, rather than nothing?

   Q2. Why does anything at all exist?

Today I explore a little further the difference between non-contrastive and contrastive explanations. Consider the difference between:

1. Why is Mary walking rather than swimming?

2. Why is Mary walking?

An answer to (2) might be: She exercises daily and her preferred form of exercise is walking. But this answer is no answer to (1). For here it is not the phenomenon of her walking that needs explaining, but the contrastive phenomenon of her walking instead of swimming. An answer to (1) might run: Mary is walking rather than swimming because she had an operation on her arm and she doesn't want to get the bandage wet.

So answering (2) does not answer (1). But it is also true that answering (1) does not answer (2). For if she is walking rather than swimming so as not to get her bandage wet, this does not explain why she is walking in the first place. It leaves open whether she walks to exercise, or to meet her neighbors, or for some other reason.

I conclude that (1) and (2) are distinct. They are distinct because their answers need not be the same.

Now let us consider the presuppositions of (1). It is obvious — isn't it? — that only what is the case can be explained. That there are leprechauns cavorting in my yard cannot be explained since it is not the case. I will allow you to say that there is a possible world in which leprechauns cavort in my yard; but since that world is merely possible, nothing in it needs to be explained. So (1) presupposes that Mary is walking. (1) also presupposes that Mary is not swimming. No one can both walk and swim at the same time; so a person who is walking is not swimming.

A third presupposition of (1) is that it is possible that Mary be swimming. If I aim to explain why she is walking rather than swimming, then I presuppose that she is not swimming. But her not swimming is consistent with the possibility of her swimming. Her not swimming is also consistent with the impossibility of her swimming. Nevertheless, if I ask why walking rather than swimming, I presuppose that she might have been swimming. 'Rather than' means 'instead of' (in place of). So if she is walking instead of swimming, and walking is possible because actual, then swimming must also be possible if it is to be something that can be done instead of walking. It might help to consider

3. Why is Mary walking rather than levitating?

4. Why is Mary walking rather than levitating and not levitating at
the same time?

These two questions have presuppositions that are false. (3) presupposes that it is possible that Mary be doing something nomologically impossible, while (4) presupposes that it is possible that Mary being doing something that is narrowly-logically impossible. Questions (3) and (4) are therefore not to be answered but to be rejected — by rejecting the false presuppositions upon which they rest.

The same holds for the rather more interesting (Q1) and (Q2). (Q1) presupposes that it is possible that nothing exist. For again it is a contrastive phenomenon that wants explaining: something rather than nothing. Either (Q1)'s presupposition is false, or it is such that, if it were true, then every being would be contingent, in which case there could be no ultimate regress-stopping explanation of why something rather than nothing exists. That is the point I made yesterday.

So the correct response to (Q1) is either to reject it by rejecting the false presupposition upon which it is based, or to reject it by pointing out that, if said presupposition were true, no ultimate regress-stopping explantion would be possible. (Q2), however, does not presuppose that it is possible that nothing exist. It does not suffer from the internal defect that bedevils (Q1).

Why Something Rather Than Nothing? The Debate Goes On

Ah yes, these big questions never get laid to rest, do they? Man is indeed a metaphysical animal as Schopenhauer said. Here are some links courtesy of Alfred Centauri:

John Horton, Science Will Never Explain Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing. Horgan and Krauss have at it in the ComBox.

Victor Stenger contributes a meatier piece, Nuthin' to Explain in which he replies to David Albert's NYT review of Krauss. One of the questions Albert raises is where the laws of quantum mechanics come from. Strenger's thesis is that "the laws of physics arise naturally from the symmetries of the void." So the void has symmetries and these symmetries give rise to the laws of physics. I imagine Albert would simply reiterate his question: where do these symmetries come from? Symmetries are not nothing. And presumably they are symmetries in this respect or that, in which case one can ask what these respects are and where they come from. And what about the void itself? If it is nothing at all, then ex nihilo nihil fit. And if it is something, then it is not nothing and one can ask about its origin. Stenger opines:

Clearly, no academic consensus exists on how to define "nothing." It may be impossible. To define "nothing" you have to give it some defining property, but, then, if it has a property it is not nothing!

Maybe I can help Stenger out. Nothing is the absence of everything. Isn't that what everybody who understands English understands by 'nothing' is this context? Have I just done the impossible? Can one rationally debate the sense of 'nothing'? Is there need for an "academic consensus"? Does Stenger understand English? Stenger goes on:

The "nothing" that Krauss mainly talks about throughout the book is, in fact, precisely definable. It should perhaps be better termed as a "void," which is what you get when you apply quantum theory to space-time itself. It's about as nothing as nothing can be. This void can be described mathematically. It has an explicit wave function. This void is the quantum gravity equivalent of the quantum vacuum in quantum field theory.

Now Stenger is contradicting himself. He just got done telling us that 'nothing' cannot be defined, but now he is telling us that it is precisely definable. Which is it, my man? The problem of course is that Krauss and Stenger want to have it two ways at once. They want to use 'nothing' in the standard way to refer to the absence of everything while at the same time using it in violation of English usage to refer to something.

I have a suggestion. What these boys need to do is introduce a terminus technicus, 'Nuthin' or 'Nathin' or 'Nothing*' where these terms refer to a physical something and then give us their theory about that. But if they did this, then they wouldn't be able to play the silly-ass game they are playing, which is to waffle between 'nothing' as understood by everyone who is not a sophist and who understands the question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' and 'nothing' in their technical sense. If they stopped their waffling, however, they would not be able to extract any anti-theology out of their physics. But that is the whole purpose of this scientistic nonsense, and the reason why Richard Dawkins absurdly compares Krauss' book to The Origin of the Species.

The latest on this topic seems to be Ross Andersen, Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete? This includes an interview with Krauss in which he responds to Albert. Some quotations from Krauss (which I may comment on tomorrow):

The religious question "why is there something rather than nothing," has been around since people have been around, and now we're actually reaching a point where science is beginning to address that question. [. . .]

What's amazing to me is that we're now at a point where we can plausibly argue that a universe full of stuff came from a very simple beginning, the simplest of all beginnings: nothing. [. . .]

The fact that "nothing," namely empty space, is unstable is amazing. But I'll be the first to say that empty space as I'm describing it isn't necessarily nothing, although I will add that it was plenty good enough for Augustine and the people who wrote the Bible. For them an eternal empty void was the definition of nothing, and certainly I show that that kind of nothing ain't nothing anymore. [. . .]

What drove me to write this book was this discovery that the nature of "nothing" had changed, that we've discovered that "nothing" is almost everything and that it has properties. That to me is an amazing discovery. So how do I frame that? I frame it in terms of this question about something coming from nothing. And part of that is a reaction to these really pompous theologians who say, "out of nothing, nothing comes," because those are just empty words. [. . .]

A Universe From Nothing? Krauss Reviewed

I had fun back in January pilloring the scientistic nonsense Lawrence M. Krauss propagates in his recent book, A Universe From Nothing. Meanwhile the book has shown up at the local library and tomorrow I will borrow it. I would never buy a piece of crap like this, though, to be fair, I will first have to read it to be sure that it is crap. That it is crap is an excellent bet, however, given what I quoted Krauss as saying and given David Albert's New York Times review of a couple days ago.

I won't quote from Albert's review. Study it carefully and you will see why Krauss' book is junk.

One mistake many people make is to think that any opposition to scientistic nonsense of the sort that Krauss spouts can only be religiously motivated. Carefully pointing out the confusions to which Krauss and Co. succumb gets one labeled an 'apologist for religion.' Now an affirmative answer to the question whether contemporary physics has the resources to explain why the physical universe exists does of course have negative implications for those forms of theism that posit a transcendent divine creator. But the question itself is not a religious question but a metaphysical question. Every clear-thinking atheist should reject Krauss's specious reasoning. Rejecting it would not make our atheist an apologist for religion.

People sometimes question what philosophy is good for. Well, one thing it is good for is to debunk bad philosophy, Krauss' scientistic nonsense being a particular egregious example of bad philosophy.

Philosophize we must and philosophize we will. The only question is whether we will do it well.

Some Aphorisms of E. M. Cioran with Commentary

How to disentangle profundity from puffery in any obscure formulation? Clear thought stops short, a victim of its own probity; the other kind, vague and indecisive, extends into the distance and escapes by its suspect but unassailable mystery.

(131)

Excellent except perhaps for ‘victim,’ which betrays Cioran’s mannered negativism. Substitute ‘beneficiary’ and the thought’s expression approaches perfection.

Indolence saves us from prolixity and thereby from the shamelessness inherent in production. (133)

An exaggeration, but something for bloggers to consider.

To be is to be cornered. (93)

Striking, and certainly no worse than W. V. Quine’s “To be is to be the value of a variable.”

Nothing makes us modest, not even the sight of a corpse. (87)

Cioran hits the mark here: the plain truth is set before us without exaggeration in a concise and striking manner.

Conversation is fruitful only between minds given to consolidating their perplexities. (163)

Brilliant. Philosophy, as Plato remarks (Theaetetus St. 155) and Aristotle repeats (Metaphysics 982b10), originates in wonder or perplexity. Fruitful philosophical conversation, rare as it is and must be given the woeful state of humanity, is therefore a consolidation and appreciation of problems and aporiai, much more than an attempt to convince one’s interlocutor of something. Herein lies a key difference between philosophy and ideology. The ideologue has answers, or thinks he has. And so his conversation is either apologetics or polemics, but not dialog. The philosopher has questions and so with him dialog is possible.

Time, accomplice of exterminators, disposes of morality. Who, today, bears a grudge against Nebuchadnezzar? (178)

This is quite bad, and not become of its literary form, but because the thought is false. If enough time passes, people forget about past injustices. True. But how does it follow that morality is abrogated? Cioran is confusing two distinct propositions. One is that the passage of time disposes of moral memories, memories of acts just and unjust. The other is that the passage of time disposes of morality itself, rightness and wrongness themselves, so that unjust acts eventually become neither just not unjust. The fact that Cioran’s aphorism conflates these two propositions is enough to condemn it, quite apart from the fact that the second proposition is arguably false. A good aphorism cannot merely be clever; it must also express an insight. An insight, of course, is an insight only if it is true. Nor is an aphorism good if it merely betrays a mental quirk of its author. For then it would be of merely psychological or biographical interest.

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both. (134)

A statement of Cioran’s nihilism. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us, it is self-contradictory. It cannot be true both that nothing exists and that an inner smile, a bemused realization that nothing exists, exists. So what is he trying to tell us? If you say that he is not trying to tell us anything, then what is he doing? If you say that he is merely playing at being clever, then I say to hell with him: he stands condemned by the very probity that he himself invokes in the first aphorism quoted supra.

Everything is nothing, including the consciousness of nothing. (144)

An even more pithy statement of Cioran’s nihilism. But if the consciousness of nothing is nothing, then there is no consciousness of nothing, which implies that the nihilist of Cioran’s type cannot be aware of himself as a nihilist. Thus Cioran’s thought undermines the very possibility of its own expression. That can’t be good.

Will you accuse me of applying logic to Cioran’s aphorism? But what exempts nihilists from logic? Note that his language is not imperative, interrogative, or optative, but declarative. He is purporting to state a fact, in a broad sense of ‘fact.’ He is saying: this is the way it is. But if there is a way things are, then it cannot be true that everything is nothing. The way things are is not nothing.

“It is of no importance to know who I am since some day I shall no longer be” – that is what each of us should answer those who bother about our identity and desire at any price to coop us up in a category or a definition. (144)

This presupposes that only the absolutely permanent is real and important. It is this (Platonic) assumption that drives Cioran’s nihilism: this world is nothing since it fails to satisfy the Platonic criterion of reality and importance. Now if Cioran were consistently sceptical, he would call this criterion into question, and with it, his nihilism. He would learn to embrace the finite as finite and cheerfully abandon his mannered negativism. If, on the other hand, he really believes in the Platonic criterion – as he must if he is to use it to affirm, by contrast, the nullity of the experienced world – then he ought to ask whence derives its validity. This might lead him away from nihilism to an affirmation of the ens realissimum.

X, who instead of looking at things directly has spent his life juggling with concepts and abusing abstract terms, now that he must envisage his own death, is in desperate straits. Fortunately for him, he flings himself, as is his custom, into abstractions, into commonplaces illustrated by jargon. A glamorous hocus-pocus, such is philosophy. But ultimately, everything is hocus-pocus, except for this very assertion that participates in an order of propositions one dares not question because they emanate from an unverifiable certitude, one somehow anterior to the brain’s career. (153)

A statement of Cioran’s scepticism. But his scepticism is half-hearted since he insulates his central claim from sceptical corrosion. To asseverate that his central claim issues from “an unverifiable certitude” is sheer dogmatism since there is no way that this certitude can become a self-certitude luminous to itself. Compare the Cartesian cogito. In the cogito situation, a self’s indubitability is revealed to itself, and thus grounds itself. But Cioran invokes something anterior to the mind, something which, precisely because of it anteriority, cannot be known by any mind. Why then should we not consider his central claim – according to which everything is a vain and empty posturing – to be itself a vain and empty posturing?

Indeed, is this not the way we must interpret it given Cioran’s two statements of nihilism cited above
? If everything is nothing, then surely there cannot be “an unverifiable certitude” anterior to the mind that is impervious to sceptical assault.

Again, one may protest that I am applying logic in that I am comparing different aphorisms with an eye towards evaluating their mutual consistency. It might be suggested that our man is imply not trying to be consistent. But then I say that he is an unserious literary scribbler with no claim on our attention. But the truth of the matter lies a bit deeper: he is trying have it both ways at once. He is trying to say something true but without satisfying the canons satisfaction of which is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of anything’s being true.

My interim judgement, then, is this. What we have before us is a form of cognitive malfunction brought about by hypertrophy of the sceptical faculty. Doubt is the engine of inquiry. Thus there is a healthy form of scepticism. But Cioran’s extreme scepticism is a disease of cognition rather than a means to it. The writing, though, is brilliant.

The quotations are from E. M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered (New York: Seaver Books, 1983), translated from the French by Richard Howard.

If the Universe Can Arise out of Nothing, then so can Mind

Over breakfast yesterday morning, Peter Lupu uncorked a penetrating observation. The gist of it I took to be as follows. If a naturalist maintains that the physical universe can arise out of nothing without divine or other supernatural agency, then the naturalist cannot rule out the possibility that other things so arise, minds for example — a result that appears curiously inconsistent with both the spirit and the letter of naturalism. Here is how I would spell out the Lupine thought.

The central thrust of naturalism as an ontological thesis is that the whole of reality is exhausted by the space-time system and what it contains. (To catalog what exactly it contains is a job for the physicist.) But this bald thesis can be weakened in ways consistent with the spirit of naturalism. The weakening makes naturalism more defensible. And so I will irenically assume that it is consistent with the spirit of a latitudinarian naturalism to admit abstracta of various sorts such as Fregean propositions and mathmatical sets. We may also irenically allow the naturalist various emergent/supervenient properties so long as it is understood that emergence/supervenience presupposes an emergence/supervenience base, and that this base is material in nature. I will even go so far as to allow the naturalist emergent/supervenient substances such as individual minds. But again, if this is to count as naturalism, then (i) their arisal must be from matter, and (ii) they cannot, after arising, exist in complete independence of matter.

What every naturalism rules out, including the latitudinarian version just sketched, is the existence of God, classically conceived, or any sort of Absolute Mind, as well as the existence of unembodied and disembodied finite minds.

The naturalist, then, takes as ontologically basic the physical universe, the system of space-time-matter, and denies the existence of non-emergent/supervenient concreta distinct from this system. Well now, what explains the existence of the physical universe, especially if it is only finitely old? One answer, and perhaps the only answer available to the naturalist, is that it came into existence ex nihilo without cause, and thus without divine cause. Hence

1. The physical universe came into existence from nothing without cause.

Applying Existential Generalization and the modal rule ab esse ad posse we get

2. It is possible that something come into existence from nothing without cause.

If so, how can the naturalist exclude the possibility of minds coming into existence but not emerging from a material base? If he thinks it possible that the universe came into existence ex nihilo, then he must allow that it is possible that divine and finite minds also have come into existence ex nihilo. But this is a possibility he cannot countenance given his commitment to saying that everything that exists is either physical or determined by the physical.

This seems to put the naturalist in an embarrassing position. If the universe is finitely old, then it came into existence. You could say it 'emerged.' But on naturalism, there cannot be emergence except from a material base. So either the universe did not emerge or it did, in which case (2) is true and the principle that everything either is or is determined by the physical is violated.

On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

This post examines Richard C. Potter's solution to the problem of reconciling creatio ex nihilo with ex nihilo nihil fit in his valuable article, "How To Create a Physical Universe Ex Nihilo," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 1, (January 1986), pp. 16-26. (Potter appears to have dropped out of sight, philosophically speaking, so if anyone knows what became of him, please let me know. The Philosopher's Index shows only three articles by him, the last of which appeared in 1986.)

I. THE PROBLEM

We first need to get clear about the problem. On classical conceptions, God creates ex nihilo, out of nothing. He is not a Platonic demiurge who operates upon some preexistent stuff: he creates without it being the case that there is something out of which he creates. Nor does God create out of himself, a notion that presumbaly would give aid and comfort to pantheism. God creates out of nothing. Given that God creates out of nothing, how is this consistent with the apparent truth that something cannot come from nothing? The latter, the principle of ex nihilo nihil fit, seems to be an intuitively self-evident metaphysically necessary truth. Let us assume that it is. As metaphysically necessary, it is not a truth over which God has any control. Its truth-value is not within the purview of the divine will. Our problem is to understand, if possible, how it can be true both that God creates out of nothing, and that out of nothing nothing comes. Potter offers an ingenious solution.

Ex nihilo nihil fit is interpreted by Potter in terms of the following Principle of Creation by Compounding:

PCC. For any object O and time t, if O comes into being at t, then there exist some objects out of which O is composed and those objects existed prior to t.

Potter sees the problem as one of reconciling (PCC) with the following principle:

ENP. God created contingent objects in such a way that there was a time t₁ at which contingent objects came into being, although there was no time prior to t₁.

On the face of it, (PCC) and (ENP) are logically inconsistent.

Continue reading “On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit“

Thinking About Nothing

Suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all. Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness? Is this thought thinkable? And if it is, does it show that it is possible that there be nothing at all? If yes, then (i) it is contingent that anything exists, and (ii) everything that exists exists contingently, which implies that both of the following are false:

1. Necessarily, something exists. Nec(Ex)(x exists)

2. Something necessarily exists. (Ex)Nec(x exists).

(1) and (2) are not the same proposition: (2) entails (1) but not conversely.

Phylogenetically, this topic goes back to Parmenides of Elea. Ontogenetically, it goes back to what was probably my first philosophical thought when I was about eight or so years old. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny!) I had been taught that God created everything distinct from himself. One day, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, I thought: "Well, suppose God never created anything. Then only God would exist. And if God didn't exist, then there would be nothing at all." At this my head began to swim and I felt a strange wonder that I cannot quite recapture, although the memory remains strong 50 years later. The unutterably strange thought that there might never have been anything at all — is this thought truly thinkable or does it cancel itself in the very attempt to think it?

My earlier meditation was to the effect that the thought cancels itself by issuing in contradiction. (And so I concluded that necessarily there is something, an interesting metaphysical result arrived at by pure thought.) To put it as simply as possible, and avoiding the patois of 'possible worlds': If there were nothing, then it would be a fact that there is nothing. And so there would be something, namely, that very fact. After all, that fact has a definite content and can't be nothing. But this is not quite convincing because, on the other hand, if there were truly nothing, then there wouldn't be this fact either.

On the one hand, nothingness is the determinate 'state' of there being nothing at all. Determinate, because it excludes there being something. (Spinoza: Omnis determinatio est negatio.) On the other hand, nothingness is the nonbeing of absolutely everything, including this putative 'state.' That is about as pithy a formulation of the puzzle as I can come up with.

Here is a puzzle of a similar structure. If there were no truths, then it would be true that there are no truths, which implies that there is at least one truth. The thought that there are no truths refutes itself. Hence, necessarily, there is at least one truth. On the other hand, if there 'truly' were no truths, then there would be no truth that there are no truths. We cannot deny that there are truths without presupposing that there are truths; but this does not prove the necessity of truths apart from us. Or so the objection goes.

How can we decide between these two plausible lines of argumentation?

But let me put it a third way so we get the full flavor of the problem. This is the way things are: Things exist. If nothing else, these very thoughts about being and nonbeing exist. If nothing existed, would that then be the way things are? If yes, then there is something, namely, the way things are. Or should we say that, if nothing existed, then there would be no way things are, no truth, no maximal state of affairs? In that case, no determinate 'possibility' would be actual were nothing to exist.

The last sentence may provide a clue to solving the problem. If no determinate possibility would be actual were nothing to exist, then the thought of there being nothing at all lacks determinate content. It follows that the thought that there is nothing at all is unthinkable. We may say, 'There might have been nothing at all,' but we can attach no definite thought to those words. So talking, we literally don't know what we are talking about. We are merely mouthing words. Because it is unthinkable that there be nothing at all, it is impossible, and so it is necessary that there be something.

Parmenides vindicatus est.

My conclusion is equivalent to the thesis that there is no such 'thing' as indeterminate nonbeing. Nonbeing is determinate: it is always and necessarily the nonbeing of something. For example, the nonbeing of Pierre, the nonbeing of the cafe, the nonbeing of Paris . . . the nonbeing of the Earth . . . the nonbeing of the physical universe . . . the nonbeing of everything that exists. Nonbeing, accordingly, is defined by its exclusion of what exists.

The nonbeing of everything that exists is not on an ontological par with everything that exists. The former is parasitic on the latter, as precisely the nonbeing of the latter. Being and Nothing are not equal but opposite: Nothing is derivative from Being as the negation of Being. Hegel got off on the wrong foot at the beginning of his Wissenschaft der Logik. And Heidegger, who also maintained that Being and Nothing are the same — though in a different sense than that intended by Hegel — was also out to lunch, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor.

If this is right, then nonbeing is not a source out of which what is comes or came. Accordingly, a sentence like 'The cosmos emerged from the womb of nonbeing,' whatever poetic value it might have, is literally meaningless: there is no nonbeing from which anything can emerge.

Being is. Nonbeing is not.