A decent sci fi story lurking in there :)

Lawrence Krauss would say that nothing is not actually nothing. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, it's postulated that before the big bang was the quantum foam - endless perturbations winking in and out of existence at the smallest of scales. However, 13.8b years ago one of the fluctuations did not wink out of existence ...

On the other hand, mystic physicist John Hagelin would postulate more or the same thing, except that he would say it was intelligent - "pure intelligence, pure awareness etc" and termed it the "unified field".

String theory would posit this as hyperspace or, "the bulk". A different kind of space that is not subject to normal rules of space and time.

Meanwhile, as Krauss points out, it's not lost on physicists that the only postulated singularities happen to be the BB and in black holes. Does that mean the universe is a black hole? Maybe.

Primal, ominous, ennui, insomnia, striving, lurking ... all the anthropomorphic jargon of the Romantic tradition imported to address the basic metaphysical question of "why anything?".

That'll work. :)

I'm describing an intentionality of cosmological phenomenology.

Yeah. But "consciousness" is a bad starting point. It is as far away from the primal, or the ultimately simple, as Nature can get.

So you are speaking of spiritual stuff - simple substance. And we know mind is about the complexities of brain architecture and a semiotic modelling relation with the world.

we ourselves are fundamentally an emanation from this mysterious primordiality. — darthbarracuda

No we are not. Not if we are actually a structure of modelling.

An emanation from a primordiality is structureless substance talk. So you are presuming a particular metaphysics - that of Romanticism.

The idealist/panpsychist undertones are clear. — darthbarracuda

Bingo. Yes they are.

So many thoughts coming up as I read this, I can't even focus to finish reading your post. Lemme try...

This is one of the best OP's I've read in awhile.

That the universe came from nothing, or creation ex nihilo, is prima facie, absurd. That the universe "came" into being seems to imply, from the semantics, that it came from or entered into somewhere or something that existed before. Before there was light, there was darkness - but this darkness is not "nothing". There must have already been something, a "firstness", "primary being", or some such eternal substance that holds up the rest of the architecture of existence as the foundations hold up a building, or the canvas displays the paint. — darthbarracuda

Indeed; all the arguments for and against God's existence are completely boring and irrelevant. This problem you're talking about of "something and nothing" is far more compelling. There's no logical proof to demand that a "firstness" exist. Firstness is just first.

Precisely, nothing cannot be positively defined, for otherwise it would be something. — darthbarracuda

"Nothing" can just be "no": Does 2+2=5? No. That's probably a pretty bad example because it's just a mathematical impossibility, but I think the sense of that sentiment stands; nothingness as the underside of thingness isn't problematic to me; you find it in apophatic theology. For instance, asking questions about God: "is God 'x'?" "No." "is God 'y'?" "No." etc. The nothingness of the apophatic indicates a something. So the nothing serves a purpose in relation to the something. There's not 100% something in the metaphysical universe; there's some something, and some nothing. I hope that makes some sense; if not, let me know.

The "nothing" is the primal Being, the darkness surrounding the light. — darthbarracuda

You may know that this is in line with the Kabbalah, as well as Jakob Boeme and Nikolai Berdyaev, and to some extent Tillich. I'm sympathetic.

In my mystical and esoteric moments I am drawn to the idea that what we call the world is a temporary dream in an endless sleep; — darthbarracuda

:fire: This concept I've found is better enunciated in story rather than philosophy. The works of David Lynch (reference my avatar), Philip K. Dick, George MacDonald, and David Lindsay express this notion better than any philosopher I know.

that consciousness is an insomnia in a population of dreamers, or a momentary divorce from the unconscious deep. — darthbarracuda

The question is how to make the "insomnia" permanent.

What anthropomorphic jargon from your own tradition do you prefer?

The enlightenment naturally. Instead of feeling, I would talk in terms of reason. So habit, intelligibility, purpose, structure, semiosis, etc.

‘Beings are not just objects’ ~ Wayfarer

Lawrence Krauss would say that nothing is not actually nothing. — Greta

However, Krauss was severely criticised for equivocating the meaning of 'nothing' in his book which purported to show that 'the universe comes from nothing'. One reviewer, David Albert, a philosophy lecturer with a degree in physics, and author of several volumes on philosophy of science, said that:

The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.

The question has two parts, the idea of transition from nothing to being, and the idea that nothing somehow seems more like what you'd expect, and being stands out like a sore thumb, something requiring explanation against that expected outcome.

I think the question of being is something that doesn't actually strike everyone. Some people, I've observed, just don't have an ear for it, it just doesn't even strike them as a question. But to others, it's a really weird thought - why is there anything at all?

Savour it, roll it around in your mind, and it just gets weirder and weirder.

The question is really the root thought of all religion and mysticism, as well as philosophy. But it sometimes gets discussed by people to whom it has never actually occurred natively, it's just something they've read about, that hasn't yet struck them fully and properly, as a live puzzle, rooting them to the spot in amazement.

The question is really the root thought of all religion and mysticism, as well as philosophy. — gurugeorge

And the basis of much anthropomorphic thinking- the anthropic principle itself even. Berekely's subjective idealism also comes to mind, at least as far as the anthropic tendency goes.

In my mystical and esoteric moments I am drawn to the idea that what we call the world is a temporary dream in an endless sleep; that consciousness is an insomnia in a population of dreamers, or a momentary divorce from the unconscious deep. The idealist/panpsychist undertones are clear. — darthbarracuda

As I was saying to the previous post, there is an anthropic tendency when thinking of the problem of being (why anything?). I am not necessarily against this thinking, but it can definitely lead to "the world is illusion" ideas. Again, that's not necessarily bad, just a characterization. Schopenhauer's Will, for example is primary- all else are manifestations of the roiling, seething, striving, "force" or principle. It is beyond space/time (we cannot fathom this of course) and thus bootstraps itself into having no start, no end, no cause, no finality. The illusion arises from the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and from there the individuation process of processes and/or objects occurring in space and time. However, I never got how the "illusion" exists alongside the primary reality (Will). If there is illusion, it seems intractable. In other words, the illusion IS something, even if not what we think it is. Thus we can never get to just a unitary reality, but always binary.

There are two questions. 1) What does it mean to be, Heidegger's seinfrage? And 2) What is being? Neither question is easy to understand or to answer.

The second question must be qualified to be answerable. It does not, it cannot, refer to things. If asked with respect to, say, a rock, it becomes the question, What is the being of a rock? In this sense it is a nonsense question. Rocks are not beings; rocks do not have being. The best that can be done with a rock is what a scientist does in asking what is a rock. The "is" seems to throw us back in to being - and it does! But the good scientist recasts the question into several questions: e.g. where did it come from, how was it made, what is it made of, and so forth. Or the poet. The poet's poem of the rock is of course nonsense manifested. But the nonsense of it is transparent; the rock is transmuted into something else that serves poetic purpose.

Heidegger's answer seems to have been that what it means to be, is (for a being, "dasein") to be resolute in the face of truth within the (temporal) framework of a life - but this phrase is chock-full of terms of art to be understood as Heidegger defined them.

"Resolute" does not mean courageous, although it could. "Truth" is the more difficult. Heidegger wrote that the essence of truth is the truth of essence, a difficult box to open without at least a hint. An example from a book: A mother is a female parent (P). P is true; P is a true proposition. If we were to ask if P is true, the answer would be yes. But P says nothing whatever about what it means to be a mother, nor is that derivable from P. We would have to explicitly ask, what does it mean to be mother? What, in essence, is the essence of being a mother? The categorical proposition P, while true, presupposes what it means to be a mother. What it means to be a mother is the primordial ground for the propositional truth of P.

The question of the OP seems to be about the something v. nothing. This is scientific question and not a being question. At the moment science seems to take us pretty far, but not all the way. Where science's trail peters out is where mysticism takes over. But mysticism is neither being nor science. It is just nonsense. I'd like to say that some good can come of nonsense, but I cannot find any. Even as entertainment, it seems the entertainment comes from somewhere other than the nonsense itself.

it is not so difficult to understand something from nothing once you accept that nothing does not mean what most people think it means. All measurements of being are by definition measurements of post bang being. Just as the tools for measuring light would return a reading of nothing when directed toward the darkness, so too would the tools for measuring post bang being return a reading of nothing when directed toward pre bang being.

The question of the OP seems to be about the something v. nothing. This is scientific question and not a being question. — tim wood

seriously?

If science is not about the nature of being, then what is it about?

The province of science is to explain what it can explain, not to claim dominion over what it cannot explain.

And science is no more equipped to explain "nothingness" than is a spickledefork.

I'd say science is about entities and definitely not about the nature of being.

almost as if entities have no being.

They are. H talks a lot about the way science ignores being in What is Metaphysics.

You can capitalize the first letters in your sentences if you want to. There's no rule against it. Most editors can be set to do it automatically.

They are. H talks a lot about the way science ignores being in What is Metaphysics. — frank

are we limited to H's conception of the nature of being?

there are a thousand definitions of metaphysics that all sound very much like "metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of being, existence, and reality." I am pretty sure that big bang thing fits in there somewhere. and that is sciency for sure.

the best you can say is that science is interested only in a particular realm of being. but certainly they are interested in the nature of being of those beings that fall within the realm of being in which they are interested.

and thanks for cluing me in about that capitalization thing.

Science doesn't pay attention to being as such. I just mentioned What is Metaphysics because H explores why science doesn't pay attention to the issue of being. Plus I just read it. :razz:

In my mystical and esoteric moments I am drawn to the idea that what we call the world is a temporary dream in an endless sleep; that consciousness is an insomnia in a population of dreamers, or a momentary divorce from the unconscious deep. The idealist/panpsychist undertones are clear. — darthbarracuda

Same. I like the idea of 'awakening' being the same thing as 'falling back asleep.'

When I was a teenager, I worked at a weird kind of lake-island resort in Maine. The vacationers owned houses there, it was accessible only by ferry, and they'd stay a few summer-months a year. We - the staff - would cook and wait on them, run the ferry, do maintenance etc etc. We - the staff - lived in a kind of bunkhouse, on the island, and would spend most of our off-hours getting very intoxicated. There was one kid on the staff, a hardcore stoner, who had this goal: To get so stoned, it would feel just like being sober. This became a kind of running joke, and we'd give him shit about it: Why not just not smoke? etc etc.

But there's something about that idea I always liked.

'preciate the name drops fam

Science doesn't pay attention to being as such. I just mentioned What is Metaphysics because H explores why science doesn't pay attention to the issue of being. Plus I just read it. :razz: — frank

:smile:

Probably the most important part of this discussion is the ontological distinction between beings and Being. Science ignores Being, it has no place in the enterprise. But science is not metaphysics. We can have a scientific metaphysics, one that is compatible with and informed by science, but fundamental metaphysics is a separate mode of inquiry that exists somewhere in between the empirical disciplines and the romantic poets. It is a degradation of philosophy and metaphysics to reduce them to a "discipline", as if metaphysicians work alongside botanists, astronomers or geologists in the same frame of reference. But it is also a mistake to chalk this up to subjective "feelings" that have no relation to the world, to Being. So on one hand we must establish metaphysics as separate from science, and on the other establish that it is not illegitimate. Metaphysics has historically struggled with an identity because of this ambiguity of Being.

Being is not a thing, it is not an entity or a special kind of being. Beings have Being (yet it is not a property), they participate in Being, they come into Being. It is difficult to explain what Being is, yet we intuitively understand what it means to-be. This is captured in the cosmological question: why something, rather than nothing? And furthermore, in the Levinasian route, we understand the il y a, the "there-is" without anything being. As I noted before, every object could disappear and there would still be this Being.

A scientific explanation of the origins of the cosmos skips over the ontological distinction. There's nothing wrong with this, because it is not in the aim of science to inquire about Being. With science, we are led to theories of extravagant and alien things, processes, events - extraordinarily dense black holes, infinitesimally small "strings", mysterious quantum particles that have mirrors billions of light years away, symmetry breaking, entropic decay, etc. However, all of these already have Being and so are inappropriate to answer the question of Being. Metaphysics aims to find what makes it the case that these things are rather than not, beyond the causality that science describes.

Metaphysics is not looking for causes, but onto-theology obscures this in its search for the Ultimate Cause.

There's not 100% something in the metaphysical universe; there's some something, and some nothing. I hope that makes some sense; if not, let me know. — Noble Dust

This sounds Platonic. The things that exist participate in Being insofar as they instantiate aspects of the perfect Ideas, but these things are not in themselves perfect.

What I am thinking however is that nothingness implies somethingness. To say "nothing exists" is a malformed proposition, an incoherent idea, for the fact is that if nothing existed, then this includes the fact or proposition that nothing exists. "Nothing exists" is a performative contradiction. And "something exists" tells us something substantial that is not captured by science. It is not about whether a frog exists, or a star exists, it is about whether or not something exists tout court and what it means for this thing to exist, regardless of what this thing actually is. Its identity is irrelevant: all beings, despite empirical differences, nevertheless equally participate in Being such that we can say they exist without having to make any additions.

Try to think about what "being" means. If you want to have an idiosyncratic definition of it, you're free to do so. But private language, unless you're a world-class something-or-other, is more trouble than it's worth and in fact is a cover for ignorance.

I admit to an ambiguity about its usage. I am; you are; a rock is. But if you cannot grasp a difference between the first two and the third, then how are you going to make sense of the difference. Or do you suggest that there is no difference. Most folks at some level grasp that there is a difference.

In failing to grasp the difference, you muddle everything you say. I see DarthB... has got all this covered.

Try to think about what "being" means — tim wood

You may rest assured, I am familiar with the concept of being.

If memory serves, you suggested that the issue raised in the OP was not properly a philosophical consideration.

If I misunderstood, then my apologies.

If I understood correctly, then offer some arguments that actually support the claim.

I will wait here.

Earlier, we briefly discussed how we both "felt" as though we may have existed in some form before we existed here on Earth. It sounds fantastic and the skeptical alarm bells are ringing loud and clear that this is magical woo, but a similar feeling arises in me when I contemplate Being as opposed to being. If the Scholastics are correct, and God is the eternal, infinite ground for Being, then the entire world could end and God would remain. God is, He always was and always will be.

That there is something more to the world than the world, that the foundation of the world permeates every facet while simultaneously extending beyond the finite, is an idea that I think is at the heart of religious sentiments.

What I am thinking however is that nothingness implies somethingness. To say "nothing exists" is a malformed proposition, an incoherent idea, for the fact is that if nothing existed, then this includes the fact or proposition that nothing exists. "Nothing exists" is a performative contradiction. — darthbarracuda

I disagree.

The only meaningful thing implied by nothingness is that considerations were given to the apparent temporal aspects of being.

To treat "nothing" as implying "something" is to reduce it to a present to hand entity.

It is an existenzial of Dasein (and it is experienced as dread).

Actually, DarthB...'s first sentence in the OP kind of covers what I was trying to say, and he did a better job of it.

The question of Being - that there is something rather than nothing - is a special question that cannot be approached conventionally through the use of profane instruments or observation tout court. — darthbarracuda

Note his qualification as to it applying to the question of something v. nothing. This must be a scientific question - how else can it be answered? And there's no promise science can provide an ultimate answer.

And how can any answer have anything to do with being? Being presupposes that there is a something, a world. To suppose being before world means either that being isn't of the world, or that something (being) exists before it exists, i.e., exists before the world exists.

Being is definite existence. It takes structure or form to make anything definite. Structure is organisation that limits meaningful difference or uncertainty. So the antithesis of being is not nothing but formless uncertainty. A bare potential. A kind of unexpressed everythingness or anythingness.

We can forget about something out of nothing. It has no metaphysical logic.

What is logical is an unbounded vague everythingness that develops a logical or orderly structure.

If everything could be possible, if everything could actualise even by accident, then most of those impulses would be mirror opposites and cancel each other out. They would negate each other’s possibility of being. So in fact only some integral of the total could manage to actualise. The variety would be self limiting as to what could be the developed case.

Quantum field theory already describes that. It is how the vacuum works. Existence is a sum over histories. We have the strongest scientific support for the idea.

So we know that there is being. We know that being is the definite structure that results from the constraint of anythingness. We know that the principle of least action rules nature right down to the quantum limit.

The “how” of being is really quite well understood to a large degree.

Is there anything left to puzzle over? Of course.

It isn’t “why something rather than nothing” as now nothingness isn’t even a realistic possibility. The Heat Death vacuum is as near as we could get. And that is alive with virtual quantum fluctuations. To be empty is just to be self cancelling in terms of the mirror actions.

But still, something about the idea of bare uncaused fluctuation feels in need of explanation. It is the lingering material aspect.

It is nice that ontology has this last little puzzle to keep chewing on. But what is an action ... without a direction? Or without a reaction? What will we have left when we do strip away the last shreds of shaping structure or context?