A good question!
Or is it?
I’ve talked before about the issue of why the universe exists at all (1, 2), but now I’ve had the opportunity to do a relatively careful job with it, courtesy of Eleanor Knox and Alastair Wilson. They are editing an upcoming volume, the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Physics, and asked me to contribute a chapter on this topic. Final edits aren’t done yet, but I’ve decided to put the draft on the arxiv:
Why Is There Something, Rather Than Nothing?
Sean M. CarrollIt seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation.
As you can see, my basic tack hasn’t changed: this kind of question might be the kind of thing that doesn’t have a sensible answer. In our everyday lives, it makes sense to ask “why” this or that event occurs, but such questions have answers only because they are embedded in a larger explanatory context. In particular, because the world of our everyday experience is an emergent approximation with an extremely strong arrow of time, such that we can safely associate “causes” with subsequent “effects.” The universe, considered as all of reality (i.e. let’s include the multiverse, if any), isn’t like that. The right question to ask isn’t “Why did this happen?”, but “Could this have happened in accordance with the laws of physics?” As far as the universe and our current knowledge of the laws of physics is concerned, the answer is a resounding “Yes.” The demand for something more — a reason why the universe exists at all — is a relic piece of metaphysical baggage we would be better off to discard.
This perspective gets pushback from two different sides. On the one hand we have theists, who believe that they can answer why the universe exists, and the answer is God. As we all know, this raises the question of why God exists; but aha, say the theists, that’s different, because God necessarily exists, unlike the universe which could plausibly have not. The problem with that is that nothing exists necessarily, so the move is pretty obviously a cheat. I didn’t have a lot of room in the paper to discuss this in detail (in what after all was meant as a contribution to a volume on the philosophy of physics, not the philosophy of religion), but the basic idea is there. Whether or not you want to invoke God, you will be left with certain features of reality that have to be explained by “and that’s just the way it is.” (Theism could possibly offer a better account of the nature of reality than naturalism — that’s a different question — but it doesn’t let you wiggle out of positing some brute facts about what exists.)
The other side are those scientists who think that modern physics explains why the universe exists. It doesn’t! One purported answer — “because Nothing is unstable” — was never even supposed to explain why the universe exists; it was suggested by Frank Wilczek as a way of explaining why there is more matter than antimatter. But any such line of reasoning has to start by assuming a certain set of laws of physics in the first place. Why is there even a universe that obeys those laws? This, I argue, is not a question to which science is ever going to provide a snappy and convincing answer. The right response is “that’s just the way things are.” It’s up to us as a species to cultivate the intellectual maturity to accept that some questions don’t have the kinds of answers that are designed to make us feel satisfied.
My be it is just a nonsensical question that took philosopher and scientists much to long to figure out that it was.
Mark,
“My be it is just a nonsensical question that took philosopher and scientists much to long to figure out that it was.”
I find much more interest from scientists than philosophers in this question. If you look at most of the major philosophers this didn’t seem to interest them. Aristotle briefly dealt with the question “Can something come from nothing?” in Physics, concluding that something cannot come from an absolute nothing, but in another sense something can come from nothing, ie a substrate which has the possibility of something.
Leibniz used the question as part of an argument, not a question in its own right. I have asked a number of modern philosophers about the question and most say it has not even come up in even long careers of teaching, that it is more of a question for scientists.
So the idea that this is something that philosophers have pondered over the ages is a misconception.
This part seems inconsistent:
“Perhaps our language is tricking us, and existence is something that is metaphysically unavoidable. In that case some form of reality would be necessary, even if the specific form were left unexplained; we would still face the challenge of understanding our actual universe.”
If this is a reasonable speculation then why is it ruled out that a necessary reality is necessarily one way, rather than another? Yet this is ruled out earlier in the article.
Note that a “necessary being” does not need to be a God, or anything with a mind necessary being might just mean that reality, at the most basic level must be some way, rather than another.
The only other option is that reality, at its most basic level, is the way it is rather than some other way for no reason at all.
How about a third perspective, which supposes that the question may have a meaningful answer that doesn’t depend on a creator God, but that the answer is in the domain of metaphysics, not science? I’m thinking in particular of Max Tegmark’s suggestion that all possible mathematical structures are equally real (the position sometimes described as mathematical platonism), and that our universe is simply one of them. I am not sure that Tegmark himself considers this a purely metaphysical proposition, but in my opinion it is; still, as metaphysical claims go it seems intelligible to me, the sort of thing that might possibly be true even if there’s no way to prove it or test it scientifically.
From what I’ve read about a vacuum there are particles coming into and out of existence all the time – most cancel each other out and perhaps the universe as we know it has the potential to cancel itself out but for some event which led to the creation of ‘permanent’ matter and time.
The creationists over at the Discovery Institute have noticed this article and are trying to counter it with Aquinas’s Five Ways, God help us (if you’ll pardon the expression).
Robin
Got a link?
Hi John,
Here
https://evolutionnews.org/2018/02/sean-carrolls-preposterous-universe/
Cheers, thanks.
To say that nothing can necessarily exist is to assume Hume’s Fork and this has been shown to be a bad assumption. Logically speaking, the door is open to the hypothesis of God.
Maybe your most honest answer would be ‘I don’t know’.
Jesse M,
This issue was already brought up (several times) in this long thread, but I summarize. Tegmark is right, but here is a possible proof or at least a hint of. If it looks like a duck …..
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3127
I will elaborate for those who are more familiar with QM. As a matter of fact my idea is not the only one, there are many similar ideas all hinting at the same thing, that is, reality is based on a very simple mathematical structure. I shall give a few examples. They are very similar to the theory of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_sets
I n an earlier FQXI contest an essay by Kevin H Knuth
https://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Knuth_fqxi13knuthessayfinal.pdf
another paper that resembles my system
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1411/1411.2072.pdf
Actually Sean’s FQXI contest paper also hints similarly however with a different point of view
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3075
@Robin says: “Note that a “necessary being” does not need to be a God, or anything with a mind necessary being might just mean that reality, at the most basic level must be some way, rather than another.”
Yes. And it doesn’t need to be a “being” either, just some “substance”. But, note that the term “necessary” often has another connation in this context: A contingent thing is something whose origin lies in something else, whereas a “necessary” thing is something that is not contingent on anything else and so is a fundamental substance or a fundamental building block of nature that can not be explained in terms of parts.
One of the first people who proposed this sort of idea was Spinoza (in Ethics part 1), because he noticed that gods were a massive violation of Occam’s razor and overkill as a fundamental basis of reality: What is necessary doesn’t need to be anything more than what is sufficient as a set of fundamental building blocks. In any case stuff obviously isn’t made of gods, so theists are then forced to claim that stuff is created by god “ex nihilo” (from nothing). But that just makes gods an unnecessary non sequitur, which doesn’t even explain what it purports to explain.
There may not ( brute fact?) have ever, even given an infinite amount of time at the Nature´s disposal, have ever been just Nothing; however diaphanous, disperse and empty our assumptions have been imagining any “perfect” vacuum state of space. Perhaps perfectly empty vacuum states just can´t, don´t and have never existed in nature. Just a very little smidgen of something has always been woven into the cosmic fabric and always, however slightly,been present. I may misquote, but it was Issac Newton I believe who maintained that Nature´s greatest secrets would always remain opaque to mankind….and so it seems it will always be so, or if anyone still needs a reason as to ” why” there is something rather than nothing, then it must be so turtles have enough room to swim around in.
Here just for fun is a ‘proof by lack of imagination’ that the question has no answer:
1) As it cannot presuppose a framework supporting contingent or probabilistic behavior, a would-be answer would have to establish that something *necessarily* exists
2) The only available axiom is that of non-contradiction
3) The answer must therefore prove that assumption N: “It is false that something necessarily exists” contradicts [something]
4) But the only candidate for the [something] is N itself
5) (The lack-of-imagination part) But N is not self-contradictory (because I can’t imagine how it possibly could be:-)
6) So an answer does not exist
Here is a new idea. Suppose C1 caused the universe. Suppose C2 caused C1. Suppose C3 caused C2, etc… Then you will ask: where did the *whole* chain of causality C1, C2, C3, … come from? But what if the causes are *perspectival*? Then there is no global truth-valued question that can be asked of the whole series at once. So it doesn’t make logical sense to ask about the whole series, there is just a never-ending sequence of causes–each position in the series is caused by the one before it. They might have to be perspectival because otherwise you are assuming an objective perspective that is ‘outside of everything’. Also, it appears that even quantum mechanics is perspectival given the Frauchinger-Renner theorem.
With perspectivalism everything that it makes logical sense to ask about (i.e. each individual position in the causal chain) has a cause, and one doesn’t run into the ‘brute fact’ dead end.
Some recent comments seemed to have focused on the First Cause approach. Perhaps not evident, and of course could be incorrect. But a comment on February 8 did propose just that, a First Cause: Entanglement.
It combines a physics idea, entanglement (the relation), with a philosophical construct: Relation before Relata (the something).
I agree with Sean’s article. We are ultimately stuck with some brute facts setting in place the universe. What those ultimate facts or properties, etc are is not yet clear. The Closer to Truth series asks this question but finds no answer.
I’ve said it before around here but looking at the comments I think it bears repeating. I think Penrose in the intro to ‘Road to Reality’ has some of the simplest and yet most illuminating thinking here. The relationship between math, physics and mind/consciousness is set out as an inconsistent set relationship, highlighting the basic mystery of our experience of existence. (When analysed purely using logic). The paradox? Mind is broader in scope than math is broader than physics is broader than mind is broader than…
Arising questions are 1) Does consistent math necessarily equal substantiated ‘real’ universe? This is easy to pull apart if you say ‘yes”. 2) An old one batted round in these parts; what is consciousness? 3) Why does math exist and hold up? Was it ordained by a causative agent? I wrote to him on this, no reply yet. (Penrose, not the ultimate causative agent. My line isn’t that good).
I think the very fact that we are talking here about these ideas implies we think there is objective reality to our own analytic capabilities and conclusions; something sitting over or parallel to our physical/mathematical existence.
Sean said ‘nothing exists necessary’. I don’t think you can prove that, but it tends to be an assumption in philosophical discourses, based as they are on our own experience of existence. Actually I think it is ultimately a statement of self-importance. Which as several people have said, is the attitude we usually have to how we think. We necessarily think with the hardware we were ‘given’. (Personally I’d usually leave out the quotes because I think we were given it literally by a Conscious Agent).
The Bible, as far I can see, actually doesn’t teach that there was nothing before the universe. ‘Creation ex nihilo’ is not the idea of Hebrews 11v3. ‘Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.’ (Heb 11:3) I think ‘ex nihilo’ is more to do with some early Christian creeds as an idea than the Bible.
I think the categories of mind, math and physics each project across from a higher realm of possibilities known to the Creator, being as Jeff Jones said, the Spirit world. Bertrand Russell has been quoted as saying that ‘causality does not extend beyond experience’ but that cuts both ways. It is also not necessarily limited to human experience. Causality could reasonably be defined as a concept constrained to conscious minds (there are other possibilities, agreed). Causality for a Higher Being would likely go beyond our concept of the word.
The Bible has ‘love’ as an invariable attribute of God. Consciousness, for Christians, will transcend this creation, and so will love, personhood, and relationship, among other things. The Christian takes these as brute facts. The evaluation of the legitimacy of these brute facts lies outside of the scope of reductionist ‘cold logic’. Back to Jeff Jones. It takes a move of the Spirit to show people what is really going on. I’d say that our conscious personhood has a built in ‘knower’ transcending the mind, never mind (sorry) physics.
Because if there were nothing, there would be nobody to ask, “Why is there nothing rather than something?”
Mark Hunter wrote
“Yes. And it doesn’t need to be a “being” either, just some “substance”. ”
Yes, which is what I meant. The word “being” has a connotation these days as a “person” but it used to mean just some unit of existence, for instance in translations of d’Holbach’s writings you see “beings” used this way.
But something non-contingent wouldn’t necessarily be necessary.
The fundamental building block, fundamental principle, whatever, might be the way it is, rather than some other way, for no reason at all.
It is only if this fundamental building block is the way it is because it can’t possibly be any other way, that it would qualify as “necessary”