Why is there something rather than nothing?

Why not?

I voted "with philosophy", since the sort of (philosophical) analysis provided by e.g. 180 Proof reveals it to be an ill-posed question that more or less precludes any meaningful answer (and obscures other, genuine questions regarding e.g. the causal history/explanation of various aspects of the physical world).. though I suppose either "with humor" or "with bewilderment" would have been appropriate as well.

Also... was that a Paul sighting?! Good to see him still active, on some PhilosophyForum or other! :party:

and I replied I've never claimed or implied anything about "the Will", so why did you ask in the first place and keep on asking? If you have anything intelligent to say that's not a non sequitur vis-à-vis anything I've said, then now's the time to say it, 3017. Otherwise, move along; I've done you the courtesy of posting clear answers to a list of arbitrary questions, so make your tendentious point - apparently you don't agree with something I wrote in this post - or go diddle yourself somewhere — 180 Proof

They are metaphysical questions for which you seemed unable to answer. It is very clear from your one line answers. You are using the classic political pivoting strategy.

And so that leads to the obvious conclusion that you do not understand your own conscious existence (how your Will works/why you choose to live rather than die) .

There is nothing to stop "anything at all" from coming-to-be, etc. ~Atomism (metaphysics) — 180 Proof

Perhaps there is something because it is possible for there to be something. Much the same argument as above...

nothing can’t exist, for there is no possible world at which there is no world. — Pfhorrest

Indeed. Nothingness is logically inconsistent. It can also be put in this way: if there was nothing there would be the fact that there is nothing, but a fact is something.

Hi. I'm a new subscriber. Sorry for the little bit longer post to begin with.

Others have suggested that the seeming insolubility of the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is based on a flawed assumption. I agree and think the flawed assumption is that the situation we often visualize as being "absolute nothing" or the lack of all existent entities (e.g., the lack of all matter; energy; space/volume; time; abstract concepts; laws of physics, math and logic; possibilities; and minds and consciousness to consider this supposed "nothing") is really the lack of all existent entities. Instead, I think this situation is itself an existent entity, or a "something". If so, this means that "something" is necessary, or non-contingent because even what we used to think of as "absolute nothing" is a something. How can "nothing" be a "something"? I think that two possible solutions to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" are:

A. “Something” has always been here.

B. “Something” has not always been here.

Choice A is possible but doesn’t explain anything; although, more will be said about it later. Also, in order to ever answer the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and not just constantly ask it into the future, I think we're going to have to address choice B. Therefore, if we go with choice B, if “something” has not always been here, then “nothing” must have been here before it. In other words, there was "nothing" and now there is "something".

While the words "was" and "now " imply a temporal change, time would not exist until there was "something", so I don't use these words in a time sense. Instead, I suggest that the two different words, “nothing” and “something”, describe the same situation, and that the human mind, in thinking about tis situation, can view the switching between the two different words/perspectives as a temporal change.

Now, if this supposed "nothing” before the "something" was truly the lack of all existent entities, though, there would be no mechanism present to change, or transform, this “nothingness” into the “something” that is here now. But, because we can see that “something” is here now, the only possible choice is that the supposed “nothing” we were thinking of was not in fact the lack of all existent entities, or absolute “nothing”. There must have been some existent entity, or “something”, present that could either have been the “something” we see now or that would have contained the mechanism needed to cause that “something” to appear. Because we got rid of all the existent entities we could think of, the only thing that could be an existent entity would be the supposed “nothing” itself. That is, it must in fact be a “something”. This is logically required if we go with choice B, and I don’t think there’s a way around that. Another way to say this is that if you start with 0 and end up with 1, you can't do this unless somehow the 0 isn't really 0 but is actually a 1 in disguise, even though it looks like 0 on the surface. Overall, this idea leads to the result that “something” is necessary because even what we used to think of as the lack of all existent entities, or “nothing”, is a “something”. Ironically, going
with choice B leads to choice A. If what we used to think of as "absolute nothing" is actually an existent entity, or a "something", this would always have been true, which means that this "something" would always have been here.

Instead of insisting that "nothing" can't be a "something" and refusing to continue, it's more useful to follow the logic described above and try to figure out how "nothing" can be a "something". So, how can this be? I think it's first important to try and figure out why any “normal” thing (like a book, or a set) can exist and be a “something”. I propose that a thing exists if it is a grouping. A grouping ties things together , defines what is contained within and groups what is contained within into a single unit whole. This grouping together of what is contained within is equivalent to a surface, or boundary, that defines what is contained within, that we can see and touch as the surface of the thing and that gives "substance" and existence to the thing. In the case of a book, the grouping together of all the individual atoms and the bonds individual atoms creates a new and unique existent entity called a “book”, which is a different existent entity than the atoms and bonds inside considered individually. This grouping provides the surface that we see and can touch and that we call the "book". Try to imagine a book that has no surface defining what is contained within. Even if you remove the cover, the collection of pages that’s left still has a surface. How do you even touch or see something without a surface? You can’t because it wouldn’t exist. As a different example, consider the concept of an automobile. This is a mental construct in the head that groups together individual concepts/constructs labeled “tire”, “engine”, “car body”, etc. into a new and unique entity labeled as the concept “automobile”. Here, the grouping is not seen as a physical surface but as the mental label “automobile” for the collection of subconcepts. But, this construct still exists because it’s a grouping defining what is contained within. One last example is that of a set. Does a set exist before the rule defining what elements are contained within is present? No. So, in conclusion, a grouping or relationship present defining what is contained within is an existent entity.

Next, apply this definition of why a thing exist to the question of "Why is there something rather than nothing?" To start, "absolute nothing", or "non-existence", is first defined to mean: no energy, matter, space/volume, time, abstract thoughts/concepts, laws of physics/math/logic, possibilities/possible worlds, etc.; and no minds to think about this "absolute lack-of-all". Now, try to visualize this. Of course, we can't visualize it directly but we can try to do the best we can. When we get rid of all existent entities including matter, energy, space/volume, time, abstract concepts, laws or constructs of physics and math as well as minds to consider this supposed lack of all, we think what is left is the lack of all existent entities, or "absolute nothing". I don't mean our mind's conception of this supposed "absolute nothing", I mean the supposed "absolute nothing" itself, in which all minds would be gone. This situation is very hard to visualize because the mind is trying to imagine a situation in which it doesn't exist. But, once everything is gone and the mind is gone, this situation, this "absolute lack-of-all", would be it; it would be the everything. It would be the entirety, or whole amount, of all that is present. Is there anything else besides that "absolute nothing"? No. It is "nothing", and it is the all. An entirety, whole amount or "the all" is a grouping that defines what is contained within (e.g., everything), which means that the situation we previously considered to be "absolute nothing" is itself an existent entity. The entirety/whole amount/"the all" grouping is itself the surface, or boundary, of this existent entity. Said another way, by its very nature, "absolute nothing"/"the all" defines itself and is therefore the beginning point in the chain of being able to define existent entities in terms of other existent entities. What this means is that "something" is necessary, or non-contingent, because even what we previously, and incorrectly, visualized as the lack of all existent entities, or "nothing", is a "something. While this is not a new idea, I don't think a mechanism for how it could be has been presented.

One objection that often comes up is that by talking about "nothing", I'm reifying, or giving existence, to it, and this is what makes "nothing" seem like "something". But, this objection is incorrect because "nothing" itself and the mind's conception of "nothing" are two different things. They are not the same thing. In "nothing" itself, our minds and our talking about "nothing" would not be present. This means that the mind's conception of "nothing" and, therefore, our talking about "nothing" have no effect on "nothing" itself. That is, our talking about "nothing" will not reify "nothing" itself. Said another way, whether or not "nothing" itself exists is independent of our talking about it. Also, to even discuss the topic, we have to talk about "nothing" as if it's a thing. It's okay to do this; as just mentioned, our talking about it won't affect whether or not "nothing" itself, and not our mind's conception of "nothing", exists.

Like all proposed solutions to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", I can't prove my views because I can't step outside the universe to see why it came into being. All we can do is provide evidence for our arguments. That leads me to this next point. All of us can argue forever about whether this view or that one on the title question is correct. But, without evidence, all of these are just good arguments. The only way to make progress is to take our metaphysical ideas for why there are existent entities and use them to build a model of the physical universe, which is composed of physical entities. If this model is consistent with physical observations and can make testable predictions, this is science. I think this metaphysics-to-physics approach is the best way to make progress and gain wider acceptance for one's views, whether they be theistic, non-theistic or whatever.

If anyone's still reading at this point, thanks!, and there's more detail at my website at:

https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/
(click on first link)

Interest (in something).

My guess is, in the beginning of time, a symmetrical query is prevalent: 'why nothing rather than something?' This is because, if nothing existed, so did innumerable possibilities of something; and there was progression towards existence from some sort of interested party(ies).

Why must we begin from nothing? There's no evidence to suggest that at the beginning wasn't a filler of some sort.

Nothing is lack of existence; our best imagination of this is emptiness; what image(s), if any, can we imagine if we're pondering the beginning of time as nothing? I quickly imagine emptiness which is alike a void, but I can't quite pinpoint what this state is.

(Whatever it was, it must have been beautiful/ugly.)

The title question assumes there is something. While I don't assume the opposite, I don't take it as an axiom that there is something. Thus I don't have to explain it, at least not first. Seems a question for realists. How do you explain the reality of whatever it is you consider real? Not my problem. Not a realist.

I can almost agree with everything you wrote, but there are some things I would say differently. Like the concept of nothing. It's an interesting concept, and like any other negation it pressuposes the thing that it negates, and that means that nothing, by negating something actually affirmes something - something is metaphisically prior to nothing. Nothing cannot "be" without something.

So, there you go. It's simple as that. That is why something has an advantage over nothing.

But yes, as someone already mentioned above, nothing, thought as opposite of something, doesn't exist, and that is why IT DOESN'T EXIST.

The kind of nothing (or should I say nothingness?) that "was" metaphisically prior to nothing-something dualism is actually the One, that which is beyond every conception and every dualism.

So, the One was first, then it split in two: being and non-being. And why that "happend" is another story. I'm not even sure if I was clear enough on what I wanted to say here, but... Oh, well.

Nothingness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Over 12,000 words. Much ado about nutn' it would seem.

Nothing (Wikipedia)
Just under 2,000 words.

An Essay on Nothing (Sophia Gottfried, Philosophy Now)
Just over 1,000 words. You'd think there wasn't much to talk about, but I guess there is.

It seems something of a miracle that there is something rather than nothing. Why should there be anything at all? As soon as there is something, something requires explanation, which it cannot have. Contrast to nothing; this is logically what you would expect - a complete lack of anything existing at all.

So we are all lucky to be here.

Hi, Eremit. Thanks for replying! I agree with you when you say that the concept of nothing presupposes the something that it negates, but nothing itself, not our concept of nothing, would not depend on something.

I think nothing itself (not our concept of nothing) might be the same as what you call the One, and what I think some refer to as the Absolute. If I'm interpreting what you're saying correctly, then I'd agree that the "absolute nothing"/"The One"/"The Absolute" would be the most fundamental of all. This "absolute nothing" would also be the all, it would be everything there is or isn't. All and everything are groupings, and so this "absolute nothing" would be an existent entity. So, I would say something similar to what you say "then it split in two: being and non-being." except I'd say that it doesn't really split into two, but it instead can be thought of, after the fact, as either "nothing"/non-being or, when thought of in terms of its being a grouping, as "something"/being. And, it's this switching back and forth between ways of thinking of it that we might mistakenly call before and after, or a change in time.

Anyways, I think this kind of mechanistic thinking is what will let us finally make progress on this question and then use the answer to discover and invent new things.

That something, or nothing should be seems to imply at least a time when it is or isn't as the case may or may not be. Being and non-being happen to time or within time or as time. Time itself therefore does not exist; there is only the being and not-being happening that give rise to time as the relation of one to the other. Or to put is more simply; only being can exist, and being necessarily happens to nothing. and that's why there is something and nothing both.

What is the profit of drinking beer, my friend?

Sure. But the "apsolute nothing" exists in a way different from existence we know and existance we can grasp, right?

And the splitting of this first Apsolute does happen when the mind (or consciousness, or whatever you want to call it) comes to be. The mind is the one that differentiates and that "creates" everything that is. With no mind to seperate being from non-being out of apsolute oneness, there is no our phisical world. There is just chaos of possibilities, everythig mixed and undistinguishable.

And I'm not really sure if I understand what you think by "switching back and forth between ways of thinking"? Could you try to explain it a bit more?

Hi. It's for sure that we can't directly visualize or grasp "absolute nothing", so all we can do is try to visualize being as close to that as possible and then extrapolating to what "absolute nothing" would be.

What I meant by "switching back and forth between ways of thinking" is that when we think of "absolute nothing" in the traditional way, it just seems like "nothing". But, when we think about it in the way I'm suggesting as being a grouping and therefore an existent entity, or a "something", changing from the first way of thinking ("nothing") to the new way ("something") can seem to us almost like a temporal change. The reason I bring this up is that a common objection is that there would be no time in "absolute nothing", so how can it ever change or transform into "something", when transformations would seem to take time? It's just a way of answering that objection. I don't think "nothing" actually changes into "something" but that "nothing" and "something" are just two different ways of thinking about the same thing. It sounds almost the same as what unenlightened said with "there is only the being and not-being happening that give rise to time as the relation of one to the other."

But, it sounds like what you said in the first reply that maybe we're thinking along similar lines with maybe a few wording preference differences.

So, nothing and something (non-being and being) are one and the same. Being is a part we can think and non-being is a part we can't think, and that is the difference we see between them, right?

But if that is the case, then there is no switching between ways of thinking because nothing is impossible to think. There is just one way of thinking, and that is being. We can touch nothingness but never grasp it with our reason. We would have to transcend ourselves to do that.

But I think I do see what you are trying to say.

That's pretty much what I was trying to get at. But, like I said, while it's not possible to visualize"nothing" directly, we do our best to imagine what it might be like. That's what people do when they think about the "nothing" in "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Anyways, that's a very minor point.

Every something is overwhelmingly nothing. Trying to draw a boundary line between something and nothing gets pretty iffy.

I think "something" came to be in terms of need and usefulness as elements of procreation. Basic reproductive instincts and life that was born were already "something" and far before people could form such question or even came to be. When they did come to be and when they considered things to be "something", they simply confirmed what preexisted. Being a tribe, people needed each other, so they were something or someone, they needed food, shelter, tools, weapons, all those named "something". From where the lack of "something" was becoming "nothing", as derogatory to existence of live creatures humans. Back then their main concern was with immediate, next to you "something" that makes everything work: community, desires, intimacy, descendants, satiety, energy, hunting, gathering. Long pass that initial time, people included into "something" the stars, the powers of nature, dreams, religious idols, departed soles, etc. They started even including into "something" things invented by their mind. Thus hunger for "something" grew. Their "something" grew and widened. Now they've seen that they are a part of a bigger "something". Again, that "something", like planets, galaxies, Universe existed as enormous prerequisite of their own existence on Earth. The concept of "something" then possibly came from people's way of perception and attention paying to the phenomenas of the heavens that aligned with their existence ( Astrology, for example). In a wide scope of "somethings" now they see "nothing" loosing it's size, even though not fast enough, but it does. Now "nothing" is not nothing anymore, it is dark matter. The conclusion could be that "nothing" does not exist, it is a constructed human category of exclusion of not immediately important (or so perceived) objects, spaces, timelines of the surrounding world. Then the question should be "Why there is everything ?" That is more happy question, directing the thought towards borderlesness in size and time and it's creative processes of the generous world-Universe and we are and always will be a part of it. The death is not death, it is temporary change of frequency.

I see"nothing" more like representation of situational lack of something. Say, the warrior needs his sword to protect self from the enemy, and as we know the planet Earth is full of swords, yet at the given space-time spot like his hand there is not sword and he is killed. He got killed because in terms of weapons he had nothing. Not to say that swords did not exist or will ever stop existing at least in the museums or computer games. Someone has nothing to eat, not because there is no food on planet Earth, it has plenty, but in a person's personal space–time fragment, it might have been absent long enough to cause death by hunger.

It's not so much a question of how I approach the question. I won't approach it; I won't even circle it warily. But if someone is really interested in obtaining an answer, if an answer can be found, it seems to me obvious that a scientific approach presents the best chance of success. Nobody's going to figure out why the universe exists by thinking about it really hard.

And that's the only question, isn't it? Why does something exist? There is no "nothing" which is an alternative to something and would exist if there wasn't something.

I was thinking about this for awhile, and let me know if this makes sense, but i believe a reason for there to be something rather than nothing is because of a lack of energy in the processes of life. As in, we are not infinitely dense or infinitely energetic, so we must take that process's path.

Think of it like running a program on your computer. If you don't have a fast write speed, it will take a long time to download a file. But it gets faster and faster as more computing power is put into it, if that makes sense.

Now, why do we exude something rather than nothing? And what changed our density to be so? Honestly I feel this is a toss up of information. Could be a simulation, could be a delusion. Could be a place in which God created. Could be just because. Or it could be something entirely different than any of those reasons.

I've honestly been waiting to tell my hypothesis about there being a lack of energy to be the reason that everything doesn't all just happen at once. (This is, of course, taking the hard determinsm perspective.)

0 contains all paired positive and negative integers to infinity on both sides which cancel eachother out to zero. This is the idea behind potential energy of space or "vacuum energy" in the sense that it is possible to get a spontaneous positive and negative particle of energy out of a field which sums to zero. This borrowed energy exists as a phenomenon (something) coming from nothing (unless you want to call the inherent qualities of a void as something too) in which case the question is nonsensical because there has always been something so there is no instead.

But if we assume that cancelling energies can be extracted from a field of zero energy then cycles can occur and cycles within cycles generate dynamics and dynamics at different rates and a dilation of time required to perform them, which would lead to a sort of evolution of processes within a ever expanding fractal of possibility so why is there something istead of nothing? Well because theres also nothing. You cannot have something without nothing.

I think something is a direct response to human sensory information, and nothing is simply where the sensory organs lack.

Nobody has mentioned Descartes yet? He wondered if everything was really just nothing. He came to the conclusion that at least his consciousness was being experienced, if nothing else could be known to exist: "I think, therefore I am."

Seems like the original post inevitably arrives at the question: why are we conscious? Couldn't our thoughts just as easily take place "in the dark", with nobody there to experience it? I also think there is a reasonable answer to that question.

Firstly, most of our mind does take place "in the dark", where nothing is being experienced. In other words, most of the human brain hosts unconscious processes. But when we use the pronoun "I" we are not referring to our entire brain, we are referring to the conscious part of our brain.

The conscious part of our brain is tasked with executive function. It casts judgment on the rest of the brain, proliferating or inhibiting the competing urges generated by the unconscious areas of the brain. Once you reflect on that, it doesn't seem so surprising that consciousness arises. If the cluttered chatter of the unconscious mind can be improved by organization and judgment, then the thing that serves as the judge/organizer likely has a bird's-eye view of the sum of all those sensory inputs. The process of that bird's-eye view itself would be human consciousness. We have awareness for the purpose of decision-making. Decision-making would be more difficult without awareness, so that's why consciousness ("something") takes place.

WHY IS THERE SOMETHING AND NOT NOTHING? There has never been an answer to this question because an answer does not and cannot exist. When we observe the Universe, we observe Cause and Effect which we describe as movement of matter. If we rewind all of the effects and causes, we come to a First Thing or Cause. Some people believe a God or a Spirit was the First Thing, and other people believe it was a point of matter.

Regardless of what the First Thing was, the First Thing either:

1. always existed or
2. spontaneously emerged.

If we are asking what caused the First Thing to either spontaneously emerge or always exist, the answer must be: nothing – Something appears spontaneously if nothing caused it to appear; and something always existed, if it was not created or caused.

Either way, there could not have been any pre-existing cause for the emergence of either God or things absent a god. Since nothing could have existed before the First Thing, a purpose could not have existed before the First Thing.

Since no thing existed before the First Thing, the answer to the question: WHY IS THERE SOMETHING AND NOT NOTHING? is “No Reason.” There was No Reason or Purpose or any other thing existing before the First Thing in the Universe. This conclusion does not mean that there is no purpose to the Universe now. The absence of an original purpose for existence results in thinking beings being able to define their own purpose.

Although a cause or purpose for starting existence could not have existed, I, as the evolution of existence can perceive doing things with purpose, and thus purpose exists now.

Hi. This is my first post in this forum. I’m not a philosopher, so please excuse me if I talk rubbish.

The posts so far in this thread have mostly treated this as a philosophical question. To me, the question is more interesting as a scientific one and I tend to think it was originally asked with a scientific answer in mind.

I think what it is asking is ‘Why are there electrons and protons, quantum fields, space-time and so on – physical things that make up our universe?’ People have suggested that there can’t be nothing because even ‘nothing’ is a mental construct and therefore ‘something’. I tend not to take the Platonic view that all possible mental constructs exist, even in the absence of any mind to construct them. So, to me, the absence of space-time and the fields that we understand to make up the universe would leave ‘nothing’. Nothing is what there would be if the big bang hadn’t happened. And this nothing is, I think, the nothing that the original poser of the question had in mind.

So I will treat it as a scientific question. As such, however, I really don’t think we have an answer to the question and it might well be that, being unable to see outside our universe, we will never have the information we need to get an answer.

As an analogy, consider a meson produced in a particle collision. It begins its life in the collision, lasts a small fraction of a second, then decays into something else and no longer exists. We don’t really know what a meson is apart from a few observable properties like its mass, velocity, charge, spin etc. Beyond knowing that it is made from two quarks, we can’t tell if it has more detail inside it than that. But suppose, hypothetically, that the meson was a self-contained universe a bit like ours, which evolved thinking beings (admittedly on very compressed space and time scales). Their universe would have a beginning and an end. They might wonder about why is existed (‘why is there something rather than nothing?’) and what caused it to exist. We know that is was caused to exist by the collision of two other particles. But the minds in the meson universe could never know that because they can’t see anything outside their universe (beside it, before it or after it). However much they observed and analysed their universe and however much their philosophers pondered it, they could never know that it existed because some human did an experiment with a particle accelerator.

Just like the meson people, we are quite possibly in a universe which is part of something bigger, but which we can never know anything about. It would then seem to be impossible to answer the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’

If we’re not part of something bigger, thinking about why the universe came into existence 13.8 billion years ago is too mind-boggling for me. If we are part of something bigger, there might be a reason why the universe exists. But then there is still the question of why the bigger universe exists. And so on ad infinitum.

Of course, the above could all be wrong. It could be that, through scientific investigation, we are starting to get an inkling of why there is something. Particle – anti-particle pairs come into existence from nothing and for no apparent reason throughout space all the time (quantum fluctuations). They have a certain energy/mass and, by the uncertainty principle, can only exist for a very short time before annihilating each other back to nothing again. The more energy such particles have, the shorter the time they can exist. If they have no energy, however, they can exist for ever. It has been argued that the positive particle/field energy of the universe exactly cancels the negative gravitational energy, so the universe might have exactly zero energy and thus could be a quantum fluctuation that lasts for ever. Maybe such quantum fluctuations just have to happen, even when there is nothing for them to happen in. Who knows? We can’t perform an experiment to test the idea unless we have a bit of ‘nothing’ to test it in. And we can’t get away from the fields that make up the fabric even of ‘empty’ space.

Can true "nothing" exist? The main question in this discussion assumes the plausibility of "nothing:" Why is there something rather than nothing? If nothing isn't possible, then this discussion is easily answered as there is something because nothing is impossible.

However, this discussion is not that easily answered, because nothing exists mathematically: (x-x= nothing). Nothing can exist as empty space, a true vacuum where there isn't a single particle, energy or any other matter. According to both the Big Bang theory, and the Stories of Creation, large areas of nothing existed. "Nothing" is anything that is outside that which exists, and "nothing" has no other describable qualities.

I like to try to imagine the beginning of all Creation. Not just what was created after the Big Bang or what was created by a Creator, but what could have existed before that even. It seems to me that there must have been a "First Thing" wherein nothing was the only thing that existed before this "First Thing."

Is a plausible answer to Why is there something rather than nothing,: "No Reason can be stated, because No Thing, including a reason, could have existed before the First Thing?

My thinking on this is that "nothing" is a non-sense term. "Nothing" - the absence of things; yet there is still something left over, that "background context" that differentiates "nothing" from "something".

The question isn't "why is there something rather than nothing?" but "why is this something rather than another?", which is a question for science. There always is something.