The claim that "nothing comes from nothing" is a positive claim which must be backed up

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The claim that nothing comes from nothing is often cited as irrefutable fact.

In actuality, it is a positive claim which, though intuitive, is not self evident, and like any positive claim, the burden of proof resides with those making it.

So, can the belief that nothing comes from nothing be defended? If so, how?
 
To give my own thoughts on the matter:

It seems to me that something coming from nothing is logically possible because it can be imagined. I can imagine something popping into existence where there was once nothing. Logically impossible things generally can’t be imagined, e.g, square circles. Does anyone know of a counterexample?
 
N0X3x said:
To give my own thoughts on the matter:

It seems to me that something coming from nothing is logically possible because it can be imagined. I can imagine something popping into existence where there was once nothing. Logically impossible things generally can’t be imagined, e.g, square circles. Does anyone know of a counterexample?
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Sorry, but your example is flawed. Something is able to pop into existence in the blank of your mind because there are things already present in your mind from which to draw on. If your mind was completely empty, with no memory, knowledge or awareness, and suddenly a thought just popped in there, then I’d agree that your premise is plausible. Instead, you imagine a blank space and populate it with something already in existence, or some variation of one or more things which already exist. As such, the thing which comes to populate your mind could not be considered to have come from nothing, and so your argument is faulty.

You -cannot- imagine something which is not derived in some way for your experiences. Even the most fantastical creations of fantasy and fiction have their basis in some pre-existing reality they’ve experienced.
 
N0X3x said:
So, can the belief that nothing comes from nothing be defended? If so, how?
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I didn’t take much from my degree in philosophy (fortunately, it wasn’t my only degree) but I did take this: in the end, there’s no such thing as proof. You can offer evidence, you can offer argument, and the other person can weigh these and choose to believe or not. You can never prove a proof to be true - that’s circular reasoning. Which is why you never win an argument on the internet, except in your own eyes and in those of third parties.

So I can’t prove it to you, but here are a couple arguments.
  1. The simple one: we don’t observe something coming from nothing.
  2. The more complicated one: Coming into being is a change of state (which I think is pretty much tautological). A change of state requires a cause. Nothing can’t be a cause, because it’s nothing (self evident in my mind).
In 2), the weakest point is “A change of state requires a cause.” I don’t think that can be proven logically, though many take it to be self-evident - it simply seems to be a truth of the physical world, and one that is generally accepted, ergo the law of conservation of mass/energy, Newton’s laws of motion, etc.
 
TomFromMD said:
I didn’t take much from my degree in philosophy (fortunately, it wasn’t my only degree) but I did take this: in the end, there’s no such thing as proof. You can offer evidence, you can offer argument, and the other person can weigh these and choose to believe or not. You can never prove a proof to be true - that’s circular reasoning. Which is why you never win an argument on the internet, except in your own eyes and in those of third parties.

So I can’t prove it to you, but here are a couple arguments.
  1. The simple one: we don’t observe something coming from nothing.
  2. The more complicated one: Coming into being is a change of state (which I think is pretty much tautological). A change of state requires a cause. Nothing can’t be a cause, because it’s nothing (self evident in my mind).
In 2), the weakest point is “A change of state requires a cause.” I don’t think that can be proven logically, though many take it to be self-evident - it simply seems to be a truth of the physical world, and one that is generally accepted, ergo the law of conservation of mass/energy, Newton’s laws of motion, etc.
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I think #2 can be demonstrated in terms of what we experience in our lives. We have never experienced a change that was not precipitated by a casual event. As such, while you’re correct that we technically cannot prove it, the sum total of human existence would suggest that a change must always be set in order by a cause.
 
N0X3x said:
Logically impossible things generally can’t be imagined, e.g, square circles. Does anyone know of a counterexample?
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Logically, a child is an effect of it’s parents.
Therefore, a child can not pre-exist its parents. (per the definition of an effect)
Imagine your grandmother as an infant.
Now, imagine your mother as an adult.

So here’s the question:
Can you imagine your mother giving birth to your grandmother? I can.

To my understanding, logically impossible just means that there’s an inherent contradiction, as there is in the above.
 
If absolutely nothing exists, then there does not exist anything which can prevent something coming from nothing.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
If absolutely nothing exists, then there does not exist anything which can prevent something coming from nothing.
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Something that isn’t possible doesn’t need to be prevented in order not to occur.

No thing prevents me from turning into a carrot, yet I am not a carrot.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
So? Who would govern the rules of actualization if absolutely nothing existed?
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If there were nothing, there is no governor, nor rules.

Since there is something, considering “nothing” seems like idle speculation.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
Sorry, but your example is flawed. Something is able to pop into existence in the blank of your mind because there are things already present in your mind from which to draw on. If your mind was completely empty, with no memory, knowledge or awareness, and suddenly a thought just popped in there, then I’d agree that your premise is plausible. Instead, you imagine a blank space and populate it with something already in existence, or some variation of one or more things which already exist. As such, the thing which comes to populate your mind could not be considered to have come from nothing, and so your argument is faulty.

You -cannot- imagine something which is not derived in some way for your experiences. Even the most fantastical creations of fantasy and fiction have their basis in some pre-existing reality they’ve experienced.
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I think you are confusing reality with concepts. Your statement about being unable to imagine things that are in some way derivative of things we have experienced is true, but I am not claiming that our thoughts can come from nothing, though I can imagine even that, but I am instead claiming that things can come from nothing, and since I can imagine it, it must be logically possible, since the set of things we can imagine is a subset of things which are logically possible.

The fact that I can imagine an uncaused change does not show that the imaginative activity itself was uncaused. Of course it was caused. I’m saying the fact that I can imagine something coming from nothing shows that something coming from nothing in reality rather than the mind, is not logically impossible.

or in other words, anything imaginable is not logically impossible.
 
N0X3x said:
The claim that nothing comes from nothing is often cited as irrefutable fact.

In actuality, it is a positive claim which, though intuitive, is not self evident, and like any positive claim, the burden of proof resides with those making it.

So, can the belief that nothing comes from nothing be defended? If so, how?
Click to expand...
And who says that there are not self-evident facts? " Nothing can be and not be at the same time in the same respect. " is a self-evident fact. Likewise, that " nothing comes from nothing " is a sef-evident fact.

Linus2nd
 
N0X3x said:
I think you are confusing reality with concepts. Your statement about being unable to imagine things that are in some way derivative of things we have experienced is true, but I am not claiming that our thoughts can come from nothing, though I can imagine even that, but I am instead claiming that things can come from nothing, and since I can imagine it, it must be logically possible, since the set of things we can imagine is a subset of things which are logically possible.
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What I’m saying is that you can’t actually imagine it. Since being able to imagine it is the entire premise of your argument, if you actually can’t then your argument is faulty. You cannot imagine something coming from nothing because anything you imagine coming from that nothing is pre-existing in your mind, and therefore from something. I’d also say you can’t imagine true nothingness. We can’t imagine it because we’ve never experienced it or anything even remotely like it. Even if you imagine a completely empty “space”, that space is still something. Do you imagine that space as completely white, or completely black? Well, both of those colors constitute “something.” You can think about it sure, but you can’t actually -imagine- it in any tangible way.

All of that is inconsequential though, since, as Tom points out, we -can- imagine illogical things.
The fact that I can imagine an uncaused change does not show that the imaginative activity itself was uncaused. Of course it was caused. I’m saying the fact that I can imagine something coming from nothing shows that something coming from nothing in reality rather than the mind, is not logically impossible.
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or in other words, anything imaginable is not logically impossible.
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A faulty premise, as Tom has already proven.
 
TomFromMD said:
I didn’t take much from my degree in philosophy (fortunately, it wasn’t my only degree) but I did take this: in the end, there’s no such thing as proof. You can offer evidence, you can offer argument, and the other person can weigh these and choose to believe or not. You can never prove a proof to be true - that’s circular reasoning. Which is why you never win an argument on the internet, except in your own eyes and in those of third parties.
Click to expand...
I think that you can prove something false by showing an inconsistency in a belief. There are also valid proofs for positive claims, provided they rest on premises both parties accept. I’d also like to mention that I have been convinced that I was wrong by the other party in an online argument before. 😃
So I can’t prove it to you, but here are a couple arguments.
Click to expand...
  1. The simple one: we don’t observe something coming from nothing.
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My understanding of Stephen Hawking’s book, “the Grand Design,” is that his hypothesis is that the reason we don’t observe things coming from nothing is that the negative energy due to gravitational fields that permeate the entire universe prevents matter from popping into the universe without cause. Nothingness (including the lack of gravity), on this view, is actually inherrently unstable and always decays into something, which is why something(the universe) appeared from nothing many billions of years ago.
  1. The more complicated one: Coming into being is a change of state (which I think is pretty much tautological). A change of state requires a cause. Nothing can’t be a cause, because it’s nothing (self evident in my mind).
Click to expand...
In 2), the weakest point is “A change of state requires a cause.” I don’t think that can be proven logically, though many take it to be self-evident - it simply seems to be a truth of the physical world, and one that is generally accepted, ergo the law of conservation of mass/energy, Newton’s laws of motion, etc.
Click to expand...
it seems to work within the universe, but one could postulate that the law of cause and effect only applies within the universe. outside or before the universe, the law of cause and effect might not apply (and by one argument, is more likely to not apply, because a law of cause and effect would be “something”).
 
ProdglArchitect said:
What I’m saying is that you can’t actually imagine it.
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Let me try this another way 🙂

Imagine a rock so hard that it can’t possibly be smashed by anything.

Got it?

OK. Imagine it being smashed.

Worked, right?

The problem is, you’re imagining two different things - an unsmashable rock, and a smashable rock being smashed.

Similarly, if I think about something coming from nothing, I think really imagining nothing, and then imagining something. The something isn’t really coming from the nothing.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
I think #2 can be demonstrated in terms of what we experience in our lives. We have never experienced a change that was not precipitated by a casual event. As such, while you’re correct that we technically cannot prove it, the sum total of human existence would suggest that a change must always be set in order by a cause.
Click to expand...
Actually, I can think of one thing that might fit here. If our wills are truly free, as Catholicism teaches, then their orientation (inclination towards either good or evil) is uncaused.
 
TomFromMD said:
Let me try this another way 🙂

Imagine a rock so hard that it can’t possibly be smashed by anything.

Got it?

OK. Imagine it being smashed.

Worked, right?

The problem is, you’re imagining two different things - an unsmashable rock, and a smashable rock being smashed.

Similarly, if I think about something coming from nothing, I think really imagining nothing, and then imagining something. The something isn’t really coming from the nothing.
Click to expand...
Oh, that wasn’t directed at you, I can imagine what you said just fine. What you cannot imagine, however, is true nothingness. No matter what, that nothingness will be populated with some aspect of your experiences, even if it’s only a color. It seems we agree though ^^
 
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