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

[balto]

First, I’d like to point out that positive claims are not held against the background of what has been believed for millenia. long-held beliefs do not and should not get preferential treatment in philosophy. Postive claims are instead held against the background of the absence of that claim. That being said, I am not making the claim that something can come from nothing, I am saying that I don’t know whether something can come from nothing or not. You are (or at least seem to be) saying that you know that nothing produces nothing, which is the positive claim.

Well sure, long held beliefs may not be true, but generally are held for some reason. It may be a bad reason but if you’re calling it into question then you need to give a reason to abandon these reasons. You’ve attempted to do that, which is good, but they are ultimately not addressing the claim “from nothing, nothing comes.” I suspect there is still some equivocation going on here and some of your comments in your last post is giving me a clue as to what the problem is. More on that below. But the word “nothing” has no referent. Saying “something comes from nothing” evaluates to “something comes from _____”.

 

[balto]

It seems to me that you’re conflating something coming from nothing *in my imagination *with something coming from nothing in reality. If I imagine a rock, I imagine a rock, not an alien disguised as a rock. I can declare, within my imagination, things to be what they are. And I can create an imaginary world in which stars appear without anything causing them to appear. If that doesn’t satisfy you, I’ll imagine a magical list that lists all the possible causes of the stars appearance, and then magically crossing out every item that did not cause the star. If all the items have been crossed out, then the star is uncaused. You can’t create imaginary worlds in which circles have corners and still are circles. All I’m saying here is that the set of all imaginable worlds is a subset of all logically possible worlds. (some worlds are logically possible but not imaginable; for example: infinite worlds).

Okay, say you are in your imaginary world and a star seemingly comes from nothing. You have your list of possible causes. The problem for you is that there is one pernicious item on that list that can never be crossed out: “the star was caused by an as of yet unknown cause.” So you always have that statement plus “the star was uncaused” and you cannot cross off the unknown cause item except by identifying a cause, which will force you to cross off “the star was uncaused.” So you haven’t imagined a world where the star was really uncaused, even though you claim to have so imagined one, just like if I claimed that I imagined a square-circle doesn’t mean I actually have done so just because I claimed that I did.

No it wouldn’t. There is a significant difference between denying that we can know that all things have causes, and the much stronger claim that nothing has a cause. If we see an effect, or an object, and don’t know what caused it, we can’t immediately assume that it has a cause. If asked whether the thing has a cause, the correct answer is not “yes, until shown otherwise (and it is impossible for anyone to show otherwise, no matter how much technology we eventually achieve)” the correct answer is “we don’t know whether it has a cause or not.” The best we can do is make up an a posteriori scientific theory based on induction, which says something to the effect of “every event has a cause” which is not beyond questioning, especially when we have a scientific reason to doubt it:

I suspect that you and I are not using the word “cause” the same way. I am using it in Aristotle’s sense, which includes material, formal, efficient, and final causes (or as Prof. Kreeft likes to call them, the four “becauses”, which does a better job of getting at the meaning). You are probably identifying “cause” with “efficient cause”, so you are probably right in saying that every non-God reality might not have an efficient cause, but that doesn’t exclude say a formal cause. I propose that we use the word “reason” instead since it is more understandable. For everything that exists, is there a sufficient reason why it exists? If the answer is no, then why do we look for reasons things exist? I don’t see how you can only selectively adhere to the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) since if you’ve abandoned PSR then one could always say that when you give a reason for something, you are not really giving a reason and that there is no reason for the thing you are attempting to explain. It just looks like there is one. This is the difficulty with calling your reason into question.

Apparently, Hawking thinks it is possible for this “nothingness” to be purely actual without also being a mind. I’m inclined to agree.

Now we’re getting somewhere more interesting. Yes, I think that accepting pure actuality does not automatically commit you to accepting that pure actuality is supremely intelligent. I think that it ultimately does necessarily lead to that conclusion, but it is not obvious simply by accepting pure actuality. That is another discussion. But if what you are saying is true, then Hawking not only admits the reality of God (pure actuality, he apparently just has a phobia of the word “God”) but even admits the possibility of miracles, since this pure actuality can inject reality into a natural order from the outside. That’s all well and good but it is not “nothing coming from nothing.”

The issue seems to be that you are defining “nothing” as the reality or concept that has no definable nature. I suppose that applies to both “nothingness” and “pure actuality.” But you are failing to note the distinction between nothingness not existing and pure actuality being “existence itself.” Nothingness has no nature since it does not exist, pure actuality has no definable nature because it just is existence (you might say that it’s nature just is existence itself, as Aquinas argues). It has no definable nature because there is no general definable class (called the “genus”) of which pure actuality is an instance. This is why Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence fails, because it attempts to use God’s essence as a premise, but no human knower can actually conceive of God’s essence. Claiming to know that God exists is not equivalent to claiming to know God’s essence, since claiming to know that a reality is real is not the same as claiming to know what it means for that reality to be real.

 

[balto]

And couldn’t it, in the process of generating everything, generate constraints upon its actuality, such as gravity? I see no reason why it couldn’t.

I would suggest that this is the wrong way to think about it. It would be more correct to say that, since gravity ultimately derives its reality from pure actuality, pure actuality refrains to act in ways that would contradict gravity (i.e. it doesn’t actualize anti-gravitational forces or powers or what-have-you). This is getting somewhat closer to understanding pure actuality as intelligent, but you’d need to flesh out just what it means exactly for a human to “know” something before we could even begin to speak of whether pure actuality knows things. We could explore that avenue if you think it appropriate to do so.

Somebody earlier on the thread recommended that you read Fr. Spitzer’s book. Seriously. Read. That. Book. Here’s the link for you: New Proofs for the Existence of God. If you are like me, you’ll find this book extremely helpful in “getting off the ground.”

 

[thinkandmull]

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.

“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.”

Don’t you believe in creation from nothing?

 

[davidv]

“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.”

Don’t you believe in creation from nothing?

What does human imagination have to do with God’s power to bring into existence that which previously did not exist?

 

[N0X3x]

Well sure, long held beliefs may not be true, but generally are held for some reason. It may be a bad reason but if you’re calling it into question then you need to give a reason to abandon these reasons.

No, you don’t. I don’t care how long a belief has been held, the rational response to discovering that a claim has no basis is to abandon the claim, not to continue holding it until someone gives you a reason not to believe it.

You’ve attempted to do that, which is good, but they are ultimately not addressing the claim “from nothing, nothing comes.” I suspect there is still some equivocation going on here and some of your comments in your last post is giving me a clue as to what the problem is. More on that below. But the word “nothing” has no referent. Saying “something comes from nothing” evaluates to “something comes from _____”.

It also evaluates to “something comes into being without cause.” Which is more intelligible and imaginable that something coming from ___.

I’ll continue my response this evening.

 

[N0X3x]

Okay, say you are in your imaginary world and a star seemingly comes from nothing. You have your list of possible causes. The problem for you is that there is one pernicious item on that list that can never be crossed out: “the star was caused by an as of yet unknown cause.” So you always have that statement plus “the star was uncaused” and you cannot cross off the unknown cause item except by identifying a cause, which will force you to cross off “the star was uncaused.” So you haven’t imagined a world where the star was really uncaused, even though you claim to have so imagined one, just like if I claimed that I imagined a square-circle doesn’t mean I actually have done so just because I claimed that I did.

My magical list is also omniscient. it has no unknown causes. I should have mentioned that last time.

But besides this, I can just declare the star to be uncaused in my imagination. If I ask you to imagine a rock, you do not have to wonder how you know that the item is a rock, and not an alien in disguise, you know your imaginary rock is merely a rock because you say it is. Or suppose I tell you imagine sitting in a room with one-way glass on a wall such that you can’t see out but other people can see in. are there people on the other side of the imaginary glass in the imaginary room? The answer is that there are if you say there are, and there aren’t if you say there aren’t, because the room is imaginary. You don’t have to imagine leaving your chair and investigating the adjacent room to find out, you can *make *the answer whatever you want it to be. Likewise, I can imagine a star appearing in the middle of empty space, and simply declare it to have come into existence without cause, because it is an imaginary event.

But all this might be moot, since we seem to have come to an agreement on efficient causes anyway:

I suspect that you and I are not using the word “cause” the same way. I am using it in Aristotle’s sense, which includes material, formal, efficient, and final causes (or as Prof. Kreeft likes to call them, the four “becauses”, which does a better job of getting at the meaning). You are probably identifying “cause” with “efficient cause”, so you are probably right in saying that every non-God reality might not have an efficient cause, but that doesn’t exclude say a formal cause. I propose that we use the word “reason” instead since it is more understandable. For everything that exists, is there a sufficient reason why it exists?

I had to look up what you meant by the four becauses, but your suspicion is correct. I was talking about efficient cause. If you expand that to include all reasons, it is indeed more difficult to think of a violation of the principle of sufficient reason that could occur in reality.

but…

I think I can do it. Suppose I get a note from my future self saying, “correct horse battery staple” I then climb in my time machine and deliver the message to my past self, completing a time loop. The eerie truth is that in this scenario, there is no reason why the message says what it says and not something else. It just… does.

If the answer is no, then why do we look for reasons things exist? I don’t see how you can only selectively adhere to the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) since if you’ve abandoned PSR then one could always say that when you give a reason for something, you are not really giving a reason and that there is no reason for the thing you are attempting to explain. It just looks like there is one. This is the difficulty with calling your reason into question.

I don’t think whether a person adheres to PSR or not should affect whether or not that person accepts a claim. Doubting PSR simply means that you acknowledge the possibility of brute facts. It does not mean saying that everything that exists or occurs is a brute fact. denying a claim (such as PSR) does not automatically mean believing its opposite. A person could deny PSR and still accept valid reasons for things.

Now we’re getting somewhere more interesting. Yes, I think that accepting pure actuality does not automatically commit you to accepting that pure actuality is supremely intelligent. I think that it ultimately does necessarily lead to that conclusion, but it is not obvious simply by accepting pure actuality. That is another discussion. But if what you are saying is true, then Hawking not only admits the reality of God (pure actuality, he apparently just has a phobia of the word “God”) but even admits the possibility of miracles, since this pure actuality can inject reality into a natural order from the outside. That’s all well and good but it is not “nothing coming from nothing.”

I think God is best defined as “non-physical mind which is the reason the universe exists.” If this happens to be pure actuality, so be it, but pure actuality is not an essential property of God, that is, we could imagine a “non-physical mind which is the reason the universe exists” that is not also pure actuality.

The issue seems to be that you are defining “nothing” as the reality or concept that has no definable nature. I suppose that applies to both “nothingness” and “pure actuality.”

I am simply saying that it is possible that nothingness is unstable. The “basic law” of reality might not be that objects in existence continue existing in their state unless acted upon, as we see in our universe, but rather that states and objects chaotically change unless something prevents them from doing so. What I mean by “pure actuality” is the state in which anything can and does come into existence, which in this view is nothingness.

 

[N0X3x]

Somebody earlier on the thread recommended that you read Fr. Spitzer’s book. Seriously. Read. That. Book. Here’s the link for you: New Proofs for the Existence of God. If you are like me, you’ll find this book extremely helpful in “getting off the ground.”

I’ll keep an eye out for it.

 

[Mount_Carmel]

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?

If there is truly nothing, then there is nothing to alter the status quo, period.

For those to challenge such an assertion, they must have a rational and/or logical alternative.

ps. Don’t quote Hawking’s ‘Grand Design’, and a won’t point out the massive illogical assertions therein.

 

[N0X3x]

If there is truly nothing, then there is nothing to alter the status quo, period.

For those to challenge such an assertion, they must have a rational and/or logical alternative.

logical alternative: What if you’re looking at this the wrong way? I could just as easily say (in fact, more easily say) that if there is truly nothing, there is nothing to keep the status quo from changing. Hawking seems to be saying in his book that gravity is what keeps the properties of states (including the state of nothing) from changing chaotically from one moment to the next.

 

[balto]

No, you don’t. I don’t care how long a belief has been held, the rational response to discovering that a claim has no basis is to abandon the claim, not to continue holding it until someone gives you a reason not to believe it.

I was going to respond to this but I don’t think continuing down this road is getting anywhere productive so I will leave it at this.

My magical list is also omniscient. it has no unknown causes. I should have mentioned that last time.

But besides this, I can just declare the star to be uncaused in my imagination.

That’s not convincing. You are claiming that contingent things can be uncaused, which is essentially a denial that they have a sufficient reason for their existence, since, qua contingent thing, they do not exist by nature and are not self-explanatory. So they would have to be metaphysically brute and have it be the case they have no sufficient reason for existing as a matter of objective fact. I don’t doubt that you have imagined a star without imagining its cause. But that by itself is not enough to distinguish between a metaphysical brute fact and an epistemological brute fact (i.e. there’s a reason but we don’t or even cannot know it) even in your own mind. Merely saying it’s is a metaphysical brute fact just because you say so does not help, since you don’t actually know that it is since, if it really were a metaphyiscal brute fact, there would be nothing to know about it anyway.

If I ask you to imagine a rock, you do not have to wonder how you know that the item is a rock, and not an alien in disguise, you know your imaginary rock is merely a rock because you say it is.,

This is not a good analogy since nobody is denying that the conception of a rock is inherently impossible. It is being argued that claiming to have conceived of an uncaused contingent reality is inherently impossible.

Or suppose I tell you imagine sitting in a room with one-way glass on a wall such that you can’t see out but other people can see in. are there people on the other side of the imaginary glass in the imaginary room? The answer is that there are if you say there are, and there aren’t if you say there aren’t, because the room is imaginary. You don’t have to imagine leaving your chair and investigating the adjacent room to find out, you can make the answer whatever you want it to be.

Again, the analogy is not apt since imagining that you either know or don’t know if there are people on the other side of the glass is not inherently contradictory. Even in this situation you are imagining that there is a fact of the matter that there either are or are not people on the other side of the glass, otherwise you wouldn’t concern yourself with finding out. You’re claiming that there is no fact of the matter by denying PSR.

 

[balto]

I think I can do it. Suppose I get a note from my future self saying, “correct horse battery staple” I then climb in my time machine and deliver the message to my past self, completing a time loop. The eerie truth is that in this scenario, there is no reason why the message says what it says and not something else. It just… does.

Assuming that time travel does not pose any other problems, there is a reason why the note says what it says: your future self wrote it. The fact that your present self does not know why it exists or even cannot know why it exists renders the note an epistemological brute fact and not a metaphysical one.

I don’t think whether a person adheres to PSR or not should affect whether or not that person accepts a claim. Doubting PSR simply means that you acknowledge the possibility of brute facts. It does not mean saying that everything that exists or occurs is a brute fact. denying a claim (such as PSR) does not automatically mean believing its opposite. A person could deny PSR and still accept valid reasons for things.

No, they cannot accept reasons for anything if they deny PSR. Suppose some phenomenon occurs. A scientist investigates it and determines the reason for the phenomenon. If you deny PSR, why can’t you simply say “well that’s nice and everything but maybe it has no cause at all!” If you reply by saying “but I’ve just given you all the reasons for it so it’s no good to merely raise the possibility of there being no reason and ignore all of the reasons given”, then why cannot someone who affirms that the universe does not arise out of nothing do the same with someone who just wants to declare matter-of-factly that the universe is uncaused? If you can deny that the universe has a sufficient reason for existing then you can deny that anything does.

I think God is best defined as “non-physical mind which is the reason the universe exists.” If this happens to be pure actuality, so be it, but pure actuality is not an essential property of God, that is, we could imagine a “non-physical mind which is the reason the universe exists” that is not also pure actuality.

That’s probably what most people think of when they think of God, but it is not God. Ultimately God is the reason why anything exists yes, but He is not “a non-physical mind.” He is not “a anything” as if He is some instantiation of a more general class of beings. A non-physical mind (what Catholic theologians would call an “angel” or “demon” although defending their reality is not relevant to the present discussion) is a contingent thing that may or may not exist since there’s nothing in the essence of being a non-physical mind that necessitates that it exist, so a non-physical mind would not be pure actuality since at the very least its existence is not essentially actual.

I am simply saying that it is possible that nothingness is unstable. The “basic law” of reality might not be that objects in existence continue existing in their state unless acted upon, as we see in our universe, but rather that states and objects chaotically change unless something prevents them from doing so. What I mean by “pure actuality” is the state in which anything can and does come into existence, which in this view is nothingness.

Again, you are switching what “nothingness” refers to. “Nothingness” refers to the absence of existence, not some chaotically changing primordial substratum. That is what defenders of “from nothing, nothing comes” have in mind. If you refuse to acknowledge this then your arguments cut absolutely no ice because you are not even talking about the same thing.

I don’t really know what “nothingness” as you define it is supposed to correspond to. On the one hand it sounds like prime matter, which is the backdrop that provides the underlying potentialities of anything that exists. It’s pure potency. But you are claiming that objects and states exist in it so there is some actuality and stability there, otherwise you could not speak of objects and states that change in it. On the other hand you state that it can cause anything else to come in existence, which sounds like God to be honest with you. But since everything ultimately derives from this ultimate reality it is not affected passively by anything else, since it has no potencies to actualize. If it did, it would be subservient to whatever is higher than can actualize those potencies.

 

[Richca]

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?

Well, can anyone provide any proof from observation of the physical universe that some being comes into existence from nothing?

 

[N0X3x]

I was going to respond to this but I don’t think continuing down this road is getting anywhere productive so I will leave it at this.

That statement I made is pretty much the topic of this thread…

That’s not convincing. You are claiming that contingent things can be uncaused, which is essentially a denial that they have a sufficient reason for their existence, since, qua contingent thing, they do not exist by nature and are not self-explanatory. So they would have to be metaphysically brute and have it be the case they have no sufficient reason for existing as a matter of objective fact. I don’t doubt that you have imagined a star without imagining its cause. But that by itself is not enough to distinguish between a metaphysical brute fact and an epistemological brute fact (i.e. there’s a reason but we don’t or even cannot know it) even in your own mind. Merely saying it’s is a metaphysical brute fact just because you say so does not help, since you don’t actually know that it is since, if it really were a metaphyiscal brute fact, there would be nothing to know about it anyway.

There may be nothing to know about it, but there would be an objective truth about it, namely: that it is a brute fact. That’s something, at least.

This is not a good analogy since nobody is denying that the conception of a rock is inherently impossible. It is being argued that claiming to have conceived of an uncaused contingent reality is inherently impossible.

Again, the analogy is not apt since imagining that you either know or don’t know if there are people on the other side of the glass is not inherently contradictory. Even in this situation you are imagining that there is a fact of the matter that there either are or are not people on the other side of the glass, otherwise you wouldn’t concern yourself with finding out. You’re claiming that there is no fact of the matter by denying PSR.

Denying PSR does not mean that there is no fact of the matter, it means that there may not be a reason for the fact of the matter.

But anyway, I think I’ve come up with a more apt analogy. I’m glad you brought up the difference between epistemology and metaphysics, because that applies here.

Suppose my star were made from undetectable stardust fairies. I can definitely imagine this, and there would be a metaphysical fact that the star was made from undetectable stardust fairies, even though there would be no epistemological method to discern that this fact were true. When I imagine something, I can imagine the metaphysical facts in the imaginary world, without worrying about the epistemological method for knowing those facts. They are known “directly” so to speak, the same way we know that we exist through cogito, ergo sum. I can imagine a causeless star the same way that I can imagine undetectable stardust fairies.

To take this example further, suppose someone claimed that a star caused by undetectable stardust fairies was logically impossible (I hope you agree that it is NOT), insisted that the burden of proof was on the other person to show otherwise, and then shot down their examples of imaginary stardust fairies creating stars by claiming that because stardust fairies could never be shown to be the cause, even in an imaginary setting, they couldn’t be accepted as evidence that stardust fairies are logically possible.

That’s essentially what you’ve done, except for causeless events rather than events with undetectable causes.

 

[N0X3x]

Assuming that time travel does not pose any other problems, there is a reason why the note says what it says: your future self wrote it. The fact that your present self does not know why it exists or even cannot know why it exists renders the note an epistemological brute fact and not a metaphysical one.

It is a metaphysical brute fact because the note was not written by the future self, it was given to him by his future self.

No, they cannot accept reasons for anything if they deny PSR. Suppose some phenomenon occurs. A scientist investigates it and determines the reason for the phenomenon. If you deny PSR, why can’t you simply say “well that’s nice and everything but maybe it has no cause at all!” If you reply by saying “but I’ve just given you all the reasons for it so it’s no good to merely raise the possibility of there being no reason and ignore all of the reasons given”, **then why cannot someone who affirms that the universe does not arise out of nothing do the same with someone who just wants to declare matter-of-factly that the universe is uncaused? **

They can! I never said they couldn’t. If a person has reason to believe that the universe has a cause, by all means, present it and I’ll take the reasoning into consideration. All a PSR denier needs to say is that we don’t know whether as yet unexplained phenomena (including the origins of the universe) have explanations or not. If we find a good explanation, there is an explanation. PSR doesn’t even apply to phenomena we already have explanations for! It only applies to things we don’t have explanations for yet.

If you can deny that the universe has a sufficient reason for existing then you can deny that anything does.

The universe is unexplained. Other phenomena are not.

That’s probably what most people think of when they think of God, but it is not God. Ultimately God is the reason why anything exists yes, but He is not “a non-physical mind.” He is not “a anything” as if He is some instantiation of a more general class of beings. A non-physical mind (what Catholic theologians would call an “angel” or “demon” although defending their reality is not relevant to the present discussion) is a contingent thing that may or may not exist since there’s nothing in the essence of being a non-physical mind that necessitates that it exist, so a non-physical mind would not be pure actuality since at the very least its existence is not essentially actual.

Okay, I’m fine with using that definition of God, then.

Again, you are switching what “nothingness” refers to. “Nothingness” refers to the absence of existence, not some chaotically changing primordial substratum. That is what defenders of “from nothing, nothing comes” have in mind. If you refuse to acknowledge this then your arguments cut absolutely no ice because you are not even talking about the same thing.

I think we are talking about the same thing, but we disagree on whether nothingness can remain nothingness. nothingness is only one possible state, and can (perhaps even must)
spontaneously change into another state that contains something. I guess I would say that, from my understanding of the theory, nothingness has the potential to become anything, and doesn’t need anything in order to move these potencies to actuality. On the contrary, there needs to be something to restrict these potencies from becoming actuality. We live in a universe where that restriction is in place, and thus we observe cause and effect.

 

[N0X3x]

Well, can anyone provide any proof from observation of the physical universe that some being comes into existence from nothing?

Stephen Hawking seems to think that there is a reason we don’t observe things coming from nothing: gravity.

 

[N0X3x]

@NOx3x

First, you must define “nothing”. Which “nothing” are you referring to? Pure nothingness aka philosophical nothingness is the absence of reality with no existential value. Empty space “nothingness”, however, is only a low density form of material reality. Or, perhaps you are referring to ex nihilo, which is nothing BUT THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

Something cannot come from pure nothingness by the very definition of pure nothingness. No need for proof. It’s defined that way.

philosophical nothingness is the absence of all real things. That is it’s definition, at least as far as I can tell. Its definition is NOT “the state which no things can come from” You may argue that nothing comes from nothing follows from the definition of philosophical nothingness, but you can’t claim that nothing comes from nothing by definition of nothingness. We need to look at philosophical nothingness, and come to a conclusion about whether something can come from it or not.

 

[N0X3x]

What is the absence of all real things? You seem to be defining this as a state of existence. In which case, you are defining philosophical nothingness as empty space. That’s incorrect. Philosophical nothingness is the absence of reality without existential value. Philosophical nothingness is not empty space. It’s not a state of existence. It’s the absence of any state of existence.

I’m not referring to empty space, which has energy in the form of quantum foam and gravitational fields. I’m talking about a nothingness which lacks even those things.

Nevertheless, if we cannot agree on the definition, then we’ll call your’s Philosophical Nothingness One and mine Philosophical Nothingness Two. LOL!

I’d like to shorten that to PN1 and PN2, if you don’t mind.

So, being that Philosophical Nothingness Two is defined as the absence of any states of existence or reality whatsoever, I think you would agree that Philosophical Nothingness Two is not the case and therefore is really solely a concept whose definition is all one can say about it?

I think PN2 is logically incoherrent. If there were a state such that nothing existed, that state would itself be an existing state. It is impossible to have an absense of all possible existing states, INCLUDING the state in which nothing exists. Either there are things in existence or there are not; an absence of both these states is not logically possible.

 

[N0X3x]

PN2 is not a state of existence. PN2 has no existential value. It is only logically incoherent if one makes PN2 what it is not, i.e. a state of existence. Existence itself is a form of reality, and hence any state of existence even if devoid is also a form of reality. PN2 is the absence of any forms of reality.

Let’s suppose that PN2 is coherrent. Since PN2 is the absence of any forms of reality, it can not describe any possibly real state, including one in which there are no things. In other words, even if PN2 is coherrent, it can’t be real! and the answer to the question “why is there something rather than PN2?” is “because PN2 can’texist as a state of affairs, almost by definition!”

If you are not referring to empty space for PN1, then I do not understand what you mean by PN1. Do you mean a reality where only God exists? Because if you are excluding God and empty space from PN1, then what’s left over in PN1? Sure sounds like you’re really talking about PN2.

PN1 is somewhere between empty space and PN2. PN1 is simply the state of affairs which lacks all things (including gravitational fields and quantum energy), but is itself a possibly real state, though there are no examples of it in our universe.

 

[onenow1]

A logical alternative : Nothing = Something.

God Bless
onenow1