And if that seems too easy, then ask “Why does anything exist at all?”, and then tell me what a satisfactory answer to that question would even look like.
And no, I don’t know the answer to that last one. But I can guess one thing, based on my previous experience with unanswerable questions.
What if we take “X exists” to simply mean “X was not made up, i.e., not a fiction, hallucination, illusion, or delusion”? Then the question becomes “Why is anything not a fiction, hallucination, illusion, or delusion at all?” Well, if everything was made up, we would be in the rather awkward position of every made up thing being made up by another made up thing, which must have also been made up by some other made up thing, etc. That’s not quite a solution, but it prohibits you from imagining a world in which nothing existed, as an empty black void.
There’s also the classic analysis of the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” which seems somewhat related. Well, when we say that anything which can take the value x is a something, we also imply “there is x”. X having the value of a something is sufficient for the truth of “There is X.” And similarly “nothing” is the term that we apply when we are presented with a list of properties which no object has, e.g., nothing is a circular square. This is not to say that there is this object, nothing, out there in the universe which is both circular and square, obviously. So the reason that it can’t be that there is nothing, is because “nothing is” is English’s short hand for negated existential quantification, so of course it is never positively quantified.
But that is all arguing from definition, which I know is silly when you are dealing with finding a truth, but what about when dissolving a question?
Existence is not the property that all things that are not made up have. There are an uncountably infinite amount of conceivable universes which have not been conceived and also don’t exist. You’re confusing “not X” and “the (phenomenological) opposite of X”.
Well, when we say that anything which can take the value x is a something, we also imply “there is x”.
So you would say numbers exist? “Five exists” sounds like a type error to me—it’s a mathematical concept, not an object.
X having the value of a something is sufficient for the truth of “There is X.”
I don’t get what you’re trying to say here.
So the reason that it can’t be that there is nothing, is because “nothing is” is English’s short hand for negated existential quantification, so of course it is never positively quantified.
You’ve befuddled the question, not dissolved or answered it. While I don’t follow your reasoning exactly, it sounds like an argument against the validity of the null set.
I hope you’re somewhat mathematically inclined, because what follows below is an attempt to express what’s wrong with your reasoning:
Consider the program
if(N=0){ return 1};
where N is the sum over the array n_a containing the amounts in existence n_i of all objects a_i which belong to the set A of objects relevant to the question, and the returned value is the truth value of the statement “nothing is A”.
For example: Let A = the set of all circular squares. Then A = {null}, n_a = {null} N = sum n_i over all i = 0. Therefore “nothing is a circular square” is true.
“Why is there something rather than nothing?” then becomes “Why is n_i not equal to 0 for all objects a_i?”. (note: Tegmark multiverses can also be considered objects).
But that is all arguing from definition, which I know is silly when you are dealing with finding a truth, but what about when dissolving a question?
When dissolving a question you are trying to find the truth. Specifically, you’re trying to find the true state of your mind which caused the question to arise. When you start using definitions, you don’t look at your mind anymore.
As for the original question, I obviously don’t have the answer, but a path that sounds plausible to me is that, information-theoretically, “everything existing” and “nothing existing” are identical: a fully connected graph is the same as a fully unconnected one. Humans don’t think this way naturally because there’s a physical difference between connected and unconnected neurons, and because we’re working solidly in the low-level-of-connections part of the spectrum (only 10^16 out of (10^12)! possible connections are present in the brain).
So if it turns out that Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis is correct (that the existence of all mathematical objects is consistent with our observations), then the question would be dissolved; there would be no mathematical rules which work upon mathematics itself to determine which parts of it “exist”. The only question would then be “How is the MUH consistent with our observations?”—which is a mathematical and physical problem for which a clear answer exists. (If you prefer “existence” to have a use in language still, because it’s a word, and words are used and defined by human consensus, and because by intuitive usage the Invisible Flying Teapot does not exist even though it’s clearly a mathematical object, you can use “existence” to refer to things which can affect our universe, or something like that).
What if we take “X exists” to simply mean “X was not made up, i.e., not a fiction, hallucination, illusion, or delusion”? Then the question becomes “Why is anything not a fiction, hallucination, illusion, or delusion at all?” Well, if everything was made up, we would be in the rather awkward position of every made up thing being made up by another made up thing, which must have also been made up by some other made up thing, etc. That’s not quite a solution, but it prohibits you from imagining a world in which nothing existed, as an empty black void.
There’s also the classic analysis of the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” which seems somewhat related. Well, when we say that anything which can take the value x is a something, we also imply “there is x”. X having the value of a something is sufficient for the truth of “There is X.” And similarly “nothing” is the term that we apply when we are presented with a list of properties which no object has, e.g., nothing is a circular square. This is not to say that there is this object, nothing, out there in the universe which is both circular and square, obviously. So the reason that it can’t be that there is nothing, is because “nothing is” is English’s short hand for negated existential quantification, so of course it is never positively quantified.
But that is all arguing from definition, which I know is silly when you are dealing with finding a truth, but what about when dissolving a question?
Existence is not the property that all things that are not made up have. There are an uncountably infinite amount of conceivable universes which have not been conceived and also don’t exist. You’re confusing “not X” and “the (phenomenological) opposite of X”.
So you would say numbers exist? “Five exists” sounds like a type error to me—it’s a mathematical concept, not an object.
I don’t get what you’re trying to say here.
You’ve befuddled the question, not dissolved or answered it. While I don’t follow your reasoning exactly, it sounds like an argument against the validity of the null set.
I hope you’re somewhat mathematically inclined, because what follows below is an attempt to express what’s wrong with your reasoning:
Consider the program
if(N=0){ return 1};
where N is the sum over the array n_a containing the amounts in existence n_i of all objects a_i which belong to the set A of objects relevant to the question, and the returned value is the truth value of the statement “nothing is A”.
For example: Let A = the set of all circular squares. Then A = {null}, n_a = {null} N = sum n_i over all i = 0. Therefore “nothing is a circular square” is true.
“Why is there something rather than nothing?” then becomes “Why is n_i not equal to 0 for all objects a_i?”. (note: Tegmark multiverses can also be considered objects).
When dissolving a question you are trying to find the truth. Specifically, you’re trying to find the true state of your mind which caused the question to arise. When you start using definitions, you don’t look at your mind anymore.
As for the original question, I obviously don’t have the answer, but a path that sounds plausible to me is that, information-theoretically, “everything existing” and “nothing existing” are identical: a fully connected graph is the same as a fully unconnected one. Humans don’t think this way naturally because there’s a physical difference between connected and unconnected neurons, and because we’re working solidly in the low-level-of-connections part of the spectrum (only 10^16 out of (10^12)! possible connections are present in the brain).
So if it turns out that Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis is correct (that the existence of all mathematical objects is consistent with our observations), then the question would be dissolved; there would be no mathematical rules which work upon mathematics itself to determine which parts of it “exist”. The only question would then be “How is the MUH consistent with our observations?”—which is a mathematical and physical problem for which a clear answer exists. (If you prefer “existence” to have a use in language still, because it’s a word, and words are used and defined by human consensus, and because by intuitive usage the Invisible Flying Teapot does not exist even though it’s clearly a mathematical object, you can use “existence” to refer to things which can affect our universe, or something like that).