Some people wonder whether this question, which Leibniz termed the “Primordial Existential Question”, is actually meaningful. Or whether it may in fact be a non-starter. For his part Parmenides asked it nonetheless, concluding that “nothingness” or “non-being” was impossible and that therefore things must have always existed. (Parmenides thus avoids an infinite regress). According to Parmenides, no first cause for either matter or motion is possible, and so if something exists at any time at all, it will have existed always, and will continue to exist unchangingly for eternity.
There are physicists who believe that a response is possible to this question, whether that is to explain why/how something can come from nothing; or that something has always existed.
Please write your views on this question, perhaps also indicating the following
- Is it meaningful?
- Can it be definitively answered one day?
- What are the philosophical implications in the case of it being answered; and in the case of it not being answered?
- Any suggestions for an answer, however outlandish?
Questions of type “Why X” assume X is true, and in this particular question X encompasses the whole existence (it could be reformulated to a more explicit form like “Why is there existence rather than void?”)
Now it becomes obvious that if there were to be an answer, then this “cause” would precede the very existence, not being a part of it, therefore not exist.
This doesn’t mean there’s no answer to a good question, but rather that the question is semantically malformed (the theory of types might give a robust framework to formalise this).
We can deduce that one cannot position itself outside of the existence to question it, but at least we can observe that “Something exists”, from the inside.
This statement, “Something exists” proves itself, and it might even be the first step into “Primordial truth”.
As a side note, it’s interesting to observe that “Existence” has no contrary. Defining “Nothing” indeed fails as if it was real it would negate the existence of anything (including its own definition).
This is definitely the most interesting question that could possibly be asked. (I prefer the shortened form “Why not nothing?”.)
I often ponder this question because it is so inscrutable to even formulate such a question. Here is the best I’ve come up with in my attempt to answer it.
Firstly, I reject the argument that “nothingness” is actually a form of “somethingness” (ergo we have a contradiction indicating that nothingness isn’t possible). I can easily imagine a total void (with nothing to even know that there is a void, ergo “no harm no foul” (i.e. no possibility for angst nor reflection over nonexistence). That is the most easily imagined situation for me. The fact that anything exists at all is quite mind bending.
Logically there are only two possibilities:
1) Creation ex nihilo (out of nothing).
2) Something has always existed.
I reject option #1 (creation ex nihilo) because it is unthinkable to me that nothing could beget something (in some sort of big bang type event).
That leaves only option #2 (something has always existed). This isn’t unthinkable to me, but it’s still mind blowing.
However at this juncture I part company with others that say that something has always existed and it is “unchanging”. I think it’s definitely evolving, but that it had no “first cause”.
At this point I opt for the sort of thinking of a mathematician in postulating axioms. A great example of this, for me, is imaginary numbers. Do imaginary (i.e. complex) numbers really exist, or are they a hack (that got us out of a corner we’d painted ourselves into); which will one day be obviated by a better system of mathematics? I don’t know, and I don’t care. The best we can do is to come up with axioms (which inherently can’t be proven), then build a system of thought on those axioms. If what we build on a system of axioms makes sense, and proves useful, we keep the axioms as “useful fictions” (until/unless we can come up with better axioms). If instead we come up with a system of thought that makes no sense, then we need to go looking for better axioms. (That’s the best we’ll ever be able to do!)
My axiom then is to define the “all that is” as the sum total of all that is. If you want to call that “God”, knock yourself out; but it still leaves open the question of “What is the nature of God?” (i.e. is he like the 1st Baptist Church would say “He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way…”, or is he a more aloof sort of impersonal force like the Deists or Unitarians would say?).
However, having arrived at this point is progress, because that’s a much better question to contemplate (i.e. “What’s the nature of God?” rather than “Does God exist?”). To me, God exists by axiom: he’s the sum total of all that is, and since we’re a part of the all that is, pondering the existence of God would seem silly. All one needs to do is look in the mirror to realize you exist; ergo you’re “knee deep in the hoopla” (as it were), and of course the all that is exists (since we’re obviously a part of it).
Will I ever get the answer to “Why not nothing?”. I doubt it, and I don’t think that’s because we don’t have enough neurons to understand the answer; rather I secretly suspect that even the all that is might not even know the answer to that question! (And of course, he appears to be “unavailable for comment” on the matter! 😉
I say this in a tongue in cheek fashion (but not merely in jest by any means): I can easily imagine the “big guy” getting up in the morning and contemplating: “How is it that I exist? Nothing ever begot me, yet here I am! But I’m glad I exist; because existence, even with all its shortcomings, is still better than nothing.”.
This then naturally leads to an existentialist view of reality: since we are all part of the all that is, we are part of God (albeit not everyone is “equally” divine; there is an evolutionary progression for all forms of life).
The God that arises from such an axiom is not an all knowing God. He couldn’t possibly be all knowing, or he wouldn’t have any interest in creation! We are literally the hands and feet of the all that is in its effort to try to understand the nature of existence. Would you go to a sporting event if you knew the outcome? Of course not. Same with the all that is. He’s exploring the nature of existence through creation precisely because the outcome isn’t known, and it’s interesting. Hence there is no God (at least not in the conventional sense), the all that is is it.
This is probably starting to sound like Nikos Kazantzakis in his book “The Saviors of God”; wherein he essentially suggests that if you’re looking to a divinity outside yourself, you don’t understand the nature of reality. The real name of the game is for us to be the saviors of God: by improving what we are, we are (in effect) increasing the net worth of the all that is and thus improving its experience of existence, because its outcome isn’t fixed nor is it even certain!
Or perhaps another analogy might be more appealing to some: perhaps in some sense, we are the daydreams of the all that is; hence it is our job to make sure those daydreams are pleasant rather than being nightmarish.
I think the question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is answerable and that our problems in answering this question are due to an incorrect distinction between the words “something” and “nothing”. The conclusion I’ve come to is that “something” and “nothing” are just two different words or ways of looking at the same underlying thing: what we’ve traditionally thought of as the “absolute lack-of-all”, or “non-existence”. I put these words in quote because I try to show by my argument that what we’ve always considered to be the “absolute lack-of-all” or “non-existence” is really not the complete lack of all existent entities and that the “absolute lack-of-all” is, in and of itself, an existent entity. This reasoning leads me to believe that the universe, or “something”, must exist because even if there were “nothing at all”, this “nothingness” can be thought of, from a different perspective, as being an existent state, or “something”. But, given this, I admit that neither I nor anyone else can ever prove their answers to this question because no one can step outside our existence spatially or temporally to see what caused it. What my goal is is to use my rationale to try and build a working model of the universe and eventually provide testable predictions. Predictably, I’m a long way from achieving this! A more detailed explanation of my answer to this question is at my website, below, and a brief summary is attached below.
https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite
From the abstract of a paper I wrote at my website on the questions “Why do things exist?” and “Why is there something rather than nothing?”:
In this paper, I propose solutions to the questions “Why do things exist?” and “Why is there something rather than nothing?” In regard to the first question, “Why do things exist?”, it is argued that a thing exists if it is a grouping, or collection. A grouping is some relationship saying, or defining, what is contained within. Such a definition or grouping is equivalent to an edge, boundary, or enclosing surface defining what is contained within and giving “substance” and existence to the thing. An example of a grouping, and thus an existent state, is a set. Without a relationship defining what elements are contained within a set, the set would not exist. This relationship, or grouping is shown by the curly braces, or edge, around the elements of the set, and is what gives existence to the set. In regard to the second question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, “absolute nothing”, or “non-existence”, is first defined to
mean: no energy, matter, volume, space, time, thoughts, concepts, mathematical truths, etc.; and no minds to think about this absolute lack-of-all. This absolute lack-of-all itself, not our mind’s conception of the absolute lack-of-all, is the entirety or whole amount of all that is present. This lack-of-all, in and of itself, defines the entirety of all that is present. It says exactly what’s there. An entirety, or whole amount, or everything, is a relationship defining what is contained within (ie., everything) and is therefore a grouping, or edge, and, therefore, an existent state. This edge is not some separate thing; it is just the relationship, inherent in the absolute lack-of-all, defining what is contained within. Therefore, what has traditionally been thought of as “absolute lack-of-all”, “nothing”, or “non-existence”, is, when seen from this different perspective, a grouping, and thus an existent state or “something”. Said yet another way, “non-existence” can appear
as either “nothing” or “something” depending on how the observer thinks about it. Another argument is then presented that reaches this same conclusion. Finally, this reasoning is used to form a primitive, causal set- or cellular automaton-like model of the universe via what I refer to as “philosophical engineering”.
Additional non-abstract note: One mistake that both academic and non-academic philosophers make in this area is to confuse the mind’s conception of non-existence with non-existence itself, in which neither the mind nor anything else is present. Because our minds exist, our mind’s conception of non-existence is dependent on existence; that is, we must define non-existence as the lack of existence. But, non-existence itself, and not our mind’s conception of non-existence, does not have this requirement; it is independent of our mind, and of existence, and of being defined as the lack of existence. Non-existence itself is on its own, and on its own, completely describes the entirety of what is there and is thus an existent state. That is, what we’ve always called “non-existence” really isn’t non-existent at all; when thought of in this different way, one can see that it’s actually an existent state and, indeed, is the most fundamental of existent
states.
Another argument that reaches the same conclusion to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing is:
1.) In regard to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, two choices for addressing this question are
A. “Something” has always been here.
B. “Something” has not always been here.
Choice A is possible but does not explain anything (however, it will be discussed more at the end of this section). Therefore, choice B is the only choice with any explanatory power. So, this choice will be explored to see where it leads. With choice B, if “something” has not always been here, then “nothing” must have been here before it. By “nothing”, I mean complete “non-existence” (no energy, matter, volume, space, time, thoughts, concepts, mathematical truths, etc., and no minds to consider this complete “lack-of-all”). The mind of the reader trying to visualize this would be gone as well. But, in this “absolute nothing”, there would be no mechanism present to change this “nothingness” into the “something” that is here now. Because we can see that “something” is here now, the only possible choice then is that “nothing” and “something” are one and the same thing. This is logically required if we go with
choice B.
There is something rather then nothing because if there was nothing then it would be boring.