People seem to find this question completely profound. I’ve been asked it many times and to me it sounds completely meaningless. My answer never seems to satisfy those who pose it though, so I thought maybe I could invite the good folks here to take a look at my reasoning and see if I’m missing something or if there is a clearer way of expressing it.
Nothing (not just a vacuum, but absolute nothing, no space, no time, no laws or properties of any kind.) seems to me to be exactly indistinguishable from non-existence. We can talk about the concept “nothing”, but to literally talk about nothing, is to not talk. To think about nothing is to not think, and to be nothing is to not be. The phrase “there is nothing” therefore seems like a logical contradiction to me. How can there possibly be nothing? Additionally, if there is no space and time, when and where would nothing reside? Never and nowhere?
As far as I can see, the question is treating nothing as a thing, which is precisely what it defined as not being. I would argue that nothing, by definition cannot be, and whatever is, is by definition something. The concept of absolute nothing can never be used to describe… well… anything, as the concept of absence is meaningless unless contrasted with things which might otherwise be present. Conversely, the term ‘something’ can be applied to all that can possibly be, and all that could in principle be imagined, whether or not our puny ape-brains can comprehend it/them. The question therefore, in my judgement, seems a little like asking; Why aren’t logically impossible things possible?
Thoughts?
Most of the people who I’ve witnessed asking that question, have been coy theists, trying to do an end around to “prove” the existence of their idea of god. So thinking as much as you have about the “nothing” end of things, is actually at the wrong end of things.
What you SHOULD put your time in, is to ferret out their choice of the word WHY, in their question.
In a non-theistic discussion of reality, WHY has no part to play. To paraphrase Yoda, “Is, or is not; there is no Why.”
Right, leave the “Why?” to the theologians. It would be better to ask “How?”.
If there was “nothing at all,” nobody would be around to ask the question. It’s an extreme case of the anthropic principle.
I completely agree. How they think postulating a conscious, anthropomorphic deity with emotions and desires, who understands Japanese and knows the all rules to bridge helps, I don’t know. The reason I focus on the “nothing” part is that that’s the usual angle that people like Lawrence Krauss seem to be criticised for. “his nothing is not really nothing” etc.
I don’t think it’s necessary to invoke the anthropic principle though if “nothing at all” is a meaningless phrase which cannot describe any imaginable reality.
Edit: (or any unimaginable one for that matter.)
Martin Gardner wrote a whole article on this subject for Scientific American decades ago. Unfortunately I am unable to find it online at the moment.
Perhaps he wrote nothing, rather than something?
“Why not ?”
The existence of the universe is proof that there being a universe is one possibility or configuration of reality (for lack of a better word). Absolute nothingness would be another possibility. Why would it be more likely ? And, even if it *was *more likely and “the existence of the universe” is a one in a million shot ; in an infinity of time that turns into a probability of 1. Over eternity everything that can be, will be.
Or ask them “why ferrets ?” instead ; and use their temporary confusion to escape a pointless conversation.
I don’t think it’s the anthropic principle. It’s just quite simply that the question implies the something. Any question implies an asker.
“Why is there nothing at all?” would be a paradox, because there wouldn’t be nothing-- there would be the asker.
Reality sounds like a ‘thing’ to me. Are you saying that no reality is a possible reality? Can non-existence exist?
It may sound like a word game, but I think the word game is actually in the original question. I don’t think “true” nothingness is logically possible. I’ve probably not done a very good job of demonstrating that to be fair.
OP — do you argue that such mathematical primitives as “2 + 2 = 4” or “Some garkles are blue” have reality? If so, you might be interested in Tegmark’s Computable Universe hypothesis.
That’s true, but it wasn’t quite what I was driving at.
In my view, it’s something more like a subtle use-mention error. Concepts refer to things, physical or metaphysical, real or imaginary. Because we have the concept “absolute nothing”, we intuitively feel like it must correspond to something. But “nothing” by definition, cannot correspond to something. My claim therefore,is that it’s meaningless to say “there is nothing” or “there was nothing” or “there could be nothing”.
I’m not sure how to answer you question without getting myself even further out of my philosophical depth. The article was interesting though. Thanks for sharing it.
A few years back, the conversation would go like this:
A: “Why does anything exist?”
B: “Asking what came before the big bang is like asking what’s north of the north pole”
i.e. an attempt at deflection using words that the original question didn’t even use.
But then it became acceptable in scientific circles to talk about “before” the big bang (or at least outside of our space-time) and you don’t hear that response any more.
Now it’s:
A: “Why does anything exist?”
B: “The concept of ‘nothing existing’ is self-contradictory”
So it’s the same logical trick again, IMO.
The question of why anything exists is a valid and important philosophical question. Even if it’s not a scientific question, and even if we can never find an answer to it.
I should also respond more directly to the OP.
I think the OP is parsing “nothing” as a noun, but that’s largely because of the imprecision of the English language. I think really what we’re trying to say is something more like logical-NOT.
There is no logical issue with NOT-exist because we’re not talking about some “thing” being at a place or time.
Why would our puny ape-brains be capable of understanding such an issue? Really, there is no reason to think that we are capable of understanding the universe in its entirety. I’m actually amazed we understand as much we do!
Once upon a time (which is an abuse of that term, but you know what I mean) there used to be only nothing. But nothing was unstable and it broke down. So we have something. Or as the famous philosopher Billy Preston put it:
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing/ you gotta have something…
Do we know that? I don’t think we know that.
Why, though? We haven’t established that it’s possible for nothing to exist, so why should we worry about it until then?