[extropy-chat] Nothingness and that Infinite Chain of Causesthingy.

[gts]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 15:43:20 -0400, A B <austriaaugust at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  The reason I started this thread was to attempt to provide a  
> (debatably) rational explanation for the question of: Why does  
> "Anything" exist instead of only "Nothing"? without having to fall back  
> on something supernatural.

I once asked a very smart friend of mine exactly that same question,  
though my motivation at the time was to convince him of some supernatural  
cause of the universe. My question was, "If God does not exist, then how  
do you explain the fact that something exists instead of nothing?" His  
answer was along the lines of, "Why shouldn't it be true that the universe  
has always existed? There is no particular reason to posit a first cause,  
because the universe itself is not of the same type of thing as the things  
inside it. Perhaps the universe has always been here for no reason at all."

I was stumped. :)

I think it was Bertrand Russell who made a similar argument as my friend's  
to refute 'first cause' type arguments for the existence of God, which  
could be used also to refute any argument similar to yours that  
"Nothingness was unstable and so Somethingness came into existence." (Just  
change your eastern-sounding argument about 'The Void giving rise to  
Existence' to the analogous western-sounding argument 'God was bored or  
lonely, so he created the world.')

As an aside, I think also that it was Russell who pointed out that it's  
superfluous and incorrect even to speak of *the* universe, (or *the*  
multiverse), because the words "the" (and "this") are pointers. When we  
say for example "the house" we really mean something like "*that* house,  
over *there*, *that* house to which I am pointing, as distinct from  
everything other than that house to which I am *not* pointing."

But we cannot point at anything at all without also pointing at Universe.  
When someone speaks of *the* universe or *the* multiverse,  the correct  
response should be "Huh? As opposed to what else?" Your answer might me  
"As opposed to Nothingness" but you cannot point at nothingness.

Of course we can and do still talk casually about "the" universe or "the"  
multiverse but I think it's a good idea to keep in mind that we make a  
grammatical error when we do so (except perhaps when distinguishing one of  
many theoretical universes in a possible multiverse).

-gts