Subject: Why is there something rather than nothing? Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 16:14:27 -0700 From: "Brian Holtz" To: , "Paul Filseth" wrote [in alt.atheism.moderated] : > > > "Why is there something instead of nothing?" cannot be explained > > > correctly, because any answer you might offer qualifies as > > > "something" and is therefore part of what you were supposed to > > > explain. > > > > Only if you assume that the explanatory relation can never > > be reflexive (A explains A) or symmetric (A explains B and > > B explains A). > > That's not an assumption; it follows from what it means to > explain something. Not necessarily. Nozick writes that "a small literature exists that attempts to formulate precise conditions whereby circular explanations are excluded" and cites work by Hempel and others. > > In his _Philosophical Investigations_ Nozick explores the alternative > > idea of "explanatory self-subsumption" and gives a hypothetical > > example: > > P says: any lawlike statement have characteristic C is true. > > Let us imagine this is our deepest law[...] Next we face the > > question of why P holds true, and we notice that P itself has > > characteristics C. [..] Our question is not whether such > > self-subsumption as an instance of itself can constitute > > a proof, but whether it can constitute an explanation. [..] > > If a brute fact is something that cannot be explained by > > anything, then a self-subsumable principle isn't a brute fact; > > To me, that looks an awful lot like Nozick just stuck in his > conclusion as a premise. He asked whether self-subsumption could reduce the brute-fact quality of a deepest law, and considered two possible senses of "brute fact". Under one sense (which you quoted) it does reduce it, while under the other it doesn't. Still, non-self-subsuming deepest laws would be considered brute under both senses, and so self-subsumption indeed seems to reduce (but perhaps not eliminate) this brute-fact quality. > > But I'm > > not so ready to completely dismiss the whole concept of necessary > > existence. In particular, I wonder if logical possibility itself > > exists necessarily? If nothing existed instead something, would > > it therefore be true that nothing can even possibly exist? > > > > If the answer is no, then there may be an answer to the Big Why > > ("why is there something rather than nothing?"). The answer might be: > > Nothing exists except logical possibility, which necessarily exists, > > and our perception of material existence is an epiphenomenon of our > > being logical subcomponents of a logically possible universe. > > Well, let's start by not being "deceived by grammar". I don't > know what it means to say logical possibility exists. The formal way > to talk about existence is to phrase it as quantification over some > set of properties. You don't say "God exists."; you say "There exists > an x such that ((x created the universe) and (x is intelligent) and > (For all y, if (y created the universe) then (y = x)))." Existence > statements that can't be rephrased that way are category errors. Can > you put "Logical possibility exists necessarily" into that form? What > are the properties of logical possibility? So how would we say nothing exists in 1st-order PC? I guess in 2nd-order PC it might be: (for all x)(for all P)(! Px). But to deal with possibility, don't we need modal logic and its operators M (it-is-possible-that) and L (it-is-necessary-that)? The modal logical system S5 is built on the extra assumption that Mp -> LMp: if a proposition is possible, its being possible is a necessary truth. This assumption sounds like what I meant above, but it is an axiom rather than a theorem. Hmm, I guess I need to learn more about modal logic: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/ -- Brian.Holtz@sun.com Knowledge is dangerous. Take a risk: http://humanknowledge.net