Why is there something rather than nothing?

[John Clark]

Lawrence M Krauss, author of the excellent book "Why is there something rather than nothing?" recently wrote a article in Scientific American, here is one quote I like"

It may be that even an eternal multiverse in which all universes and laws of nature arise dynamically will still leave open some ‘why’ questions, and therefore never fully satisfy theologians and some philosophers.   But focusing on that issue and ignoring the remarkable progress we can make toward answering perhaps the most miraculous aspect of the something from nothing question—understanding why there is ‘stuff’ and not empty space, why there is space at all, and how both stuff and space and even the forces we measure could arise from no stuff and no space—is, in my opinion, impotent, and useless.

For more see:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-philos&offset=2

There is another good article at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/

  John K Clark


 

[Craig Weinberg]

On May 3, 4:25 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Lawrence M Krauss, author of the excellent book "Why is there something
> rather than nothing?" recently wrote a article in Scientific American, here
> is one quote I like"
>
> It may be that even an eternal multiverse in which all universes and laws
> of nature arise dynamically will still leave open some ‘why’ questions, and
> therefore never fully satisfy theologians and some philosophers.   But
> focusing on that issue and ignoring the remarkable progress we can make
> toward answering perhaps the most miraculous aspect of the something from
> nothing question—understanding why there is ‘stuff’ and not empty space,
> why there is space at all, and how both stuff and space and even the forces
> we measure could arise from no stuff and no space—is, in my opinion,
> impotent, and useless.
>
> For more see:
>

> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-p...

>
> There is another good article at:
>

> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-mad...

Why would focusing on one issue be a distraction from the other? Is
there some threat of the international science budget being siphoned
off into philosophy?

I don't see how questioning the obvious absurdity of something coming
from nothing in the context of a cosmology centered on cause and
effect is dangerous in any way. To me, it's the naked emperor saying
his robe will be much more beautiful if only everyone would avert
their eyes.

If the nothing of a vacuum is really full of potentials, how is it
really different from stuff? Why should we care? Any difference
between stuff and space is trivial compared to the existence of the
possibility of difference and knowing what difference is.

Craig

[meekerdb]

On 5/3/2012 1:25 PM, John Clark wrote:
> Lawrence M Krauss, author of the excellent book "Why is there something rather than
> nothing?" recently wrote a article in Scientific American, here is one quote I like"
>
> It may be that even an eternal multiverse in which all universes and laws of nature

> arise dynamically will still leave open some �why� questions, and therefore never fully

> satisfy theologians and some philosophers. But focusing on that issue and ignoring the
> remarkable progress we can make toward answering perhaps the most miraculous aspect of

> the something from nothing question�understanding why there is �stuff� and not empty

> space, why there is space at all, and how both stuff and space and even the forces we

> measure could arise from no stuff and no space�is, in my opinion, impotent, and useless.

>
> For more see:
>
> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-philos&offset=2
> <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-philos&offset=2>
>
> There is another good article at:
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/
>
> John K Clark

See David Albert's review

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=1

Also see Vic Stenger's response to Albert's critique

http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=4754#_edn3

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 May 2012, at 23:45, meekerdb wrote:

> On 5/3/2012 1:25 PM, John Clark wrote:
>> Lawrence M Krauss, author of the excellent book "Why is there
>> something rather than nothing?" recently wrote a article in
>> Scientific American, here is one quote I like"
>>
>> It may be that even an eternal multiverse in which all universes
>> and laws of nature arise dynamically will still leave open some

>> ‘why’ questions, and therefore never fully satisfy theologians and

>> some philosophers. But focusing on that issue and ignoring the
>> remarkable progress we can make toward answering perhaps the most

>> miraculous aspect of the something from nothing question—

>> understanding why there is ‘stuff’ and not empty space, why there

>> is space at all, and how both stuff and space and even the forces

>> we measure could arise from no stuff and no space—is, in my

>> opinion, impotent, and useless.
>>
>> For more see:
>>
>> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-philos&offset=2
>> <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-philos&offset=2
>> >
>>
>> There is another good article at:
>>
>> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/
>>
>> John K Clark
>
> See David Albert's review
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=1
>
> Also see Vic Stenger's response to Albert's critique
>
> http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=4754#_edn3

Obviously comp is closer to Albert, but Albert is still ignorant of
"number's theology".
Krauss illustrates how pseudo-religious science can be, from time to
time.

Thanks to the links,

Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[John Clark]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Why would focusing on one issue be a distraction from the other?

Because Human Beings do not have infinite time to deal with, so time spent focusing on issues that Krauss correctly describes as sterile (not leading to new ideas) is time not spent focusing on profound issues that are quite literally infinitely more likely to give birth to new knowledge. There are several ways to define "nothing" but if you insist it means "not even having the potential to produce something" then contemplating the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a obviously a complete waste of time and does nothing but inflict needless ware and tear on valuable brain cells. However it now looks like if we work very hard science may actually be able to answer questions like "why there is stuff and not empty space, why there is space at all, and how both stuff and space and even the forces we measure could arise from no stuff and no space". Those are enormously deep questions and that is where we should be spending our limited time, not "impotent and useless" navel gazing.

> Is there some threat of the international science budget being siphoned off into philosophy?

Yes.
 

> If the nothing of a vacuum is really full of potentials,

If you insist on the strictest definition of "nothing" which is not even the potential of producing anything, then even God Himself could not produce something from nothing; and this line of thought is quite clearly leading precisely nowhere. 

> how is it really different from stuff?

You want to know how the potential is any different from the actual? As Krauss says in his book (which you have not read) that's like asking how the potential human being any random male and female have of producing together is any different from a real flesh and blood person. Your problem is that your brain is caught in a infinite loop trying to figure out how a nothing without even the potential to produce something can nevertheless produce something. If you're too busy spinning your wheels to read Professor Krauss's book your only hope is to at least try to squeeze in a little time to read the 2 articles I mentioned in my last post and repeat below for your benefit, they're a sort of readers digest condensed kiddy version of the book, but that's far better than "nothing" by any meaning of the word.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-p...

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-mad...

  John K Clark 

 

[Craig Weinberg]

On May 4, 11:48 am, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 3, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Why would focusing on one issue be a distraction from the other?
>
> Because Human Beings do not have infinite time to deal with, so time spent
> focusing on issues that Krauss correctly describes as sterile (not leading
> to new ideas) is time not spent focusing on profound issues that are quite
> literally infinitely more likely to give birth to new knowledge.

That is the same logic that assumes that everyone who downloads a free
mp3 is taking money out of the pockets of musicians. It presumes that
everyone who wasn't doing one thing would automatically be doing the
other.

> There are
> several ways to define "nothing" but if you insist it means "not even
> having the potential to produce something" then contemplating the question
> "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a obviously a complete
> waste of time and does nothing but inflict needless ware and tear on
> valuable brain cells.

So you agree that it is impossible to have something come from
nothing.

> However it now looks like if we work very hard
> science may actually be able to answer questions like "why there is stuff
> and not empty space,

Not if the answer is just going to be that empty space is full of
stuff and stuff is mostly empty space.

> why there is space at all, and how both stuff and
> space and even the forces we measure could arise from no stuff and no
> space". Those are enormously deep questions and that is where we should be
> spending our limited time, not "impotent and useless" navel gazing.

I think of them as incredibly shallow questions. They are like the
easy problem of consciousness. Making a big deal out of what terms we
use to describe stuffness and non-stuffness. What do you find deep
about them?

>
> > Is there some threat of the international science budget being siphoned
> > off into philosophy?
>
> Yes.

Communists? Witches?

>
> > > If the nothing of a vacuum is really full of potentials,
>
> If you insist on the strictest definition of "nothing" which is not even
> the potential of producing anything, then even God Himself could not
> produce something from nothing; and this line of thought is quite clearly
> leading precisely nowhere.

That's why it's complete hype to claim that the universe comes from
nothing. It's a slogan to sell books.

>
> > how is it really different from stuff?
>
> You want to know how the potential is any different from the actual? As
> Krauss says in his book (which you have not read)

I haven't read the Koran either, but I get the gist.

> that's like asking how
> the potential human being any random male and female have of producing
> together is any different from a real flesh and blood person. Your problem
> is that your brain is caught in a infinite loop trying to figure out how a
> nothing without even the potential to produce something can nevertheless
> produce something.

I'm not stuck in a loop at all. I only point out as a fact that the
universe could not come from something. It's a very straightforward
argument, which you apparently agree with except that someone has
written a book with a title that suggests otherwise. I'm not trying to
figure out how something comes from nothing, the book in question is.
I understand that causality is something that comes from sense, not
the other way around, so I don't have to waste my time redefining
'nothing' to include a proto-universal universe.

> If you're too busy spinning your wheels to read
> Professor Krauss's book your only hope is to at least try to squeeze in a
> little time to read the 2 articles I mentioned in my last post and repeat
> below for your benefit, they're a sort of readers digest condensed kiddy
> version of the book, but that's far better than "nothing" by any meaning of
> the word.
>
> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-p...
>
>  http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-mad...

There is nothing surprising in either of these articles.

Craig

[Pierz]

Bertrand Russell pointed out long ago that the properties of the
members of a set need not be properties of the set itself. I.e.,
everything in the universe may have a cause but the universe - the set
of all things - need not. We can argue about whether the ontological
nature of the "set of everything" is physical, mathematical,
spiritual, sensical (Weinbergism) or some other -al, but the question
why any such set exists (its cause) has no answer.

The best response is Sidney Morgenbesser's ( sure you all know it):
"If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!"

[Craig Weinberg]

On May 4, 8:00 pm, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Bertrand Russell pointed out long ago that the properties of the
> members of a set need not be properties of the set itself. I.e.,
> everything in the universe may have a cause but the universe - the set
> of all things - need not. We can argue about whether the ontological
> nature of the "set of everything" is physical, mathematical,
> spiritual, sensical (Weinbergism) or some other -al, but the question
> why any such set exists (its cause) has no answer.
>
> The best response is Sidney Morgenbesser's ( sure you all know it):
> "If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!"

Haha, yes, it may be the case that the universe began as the
simultaneous complaint of everythingness and nothingness...the grass
is always greener.

It's true though, it's not a new idea. To me, what makes it bold right
now is to take this cosmology out of the realm of philosophy and into
the realm of scientific reason. If we interpret sense as primary, I
think it becomes easy to see how time, then matter, computation, space
and causality might arise as secondary consequences. To have a set of
anything, we need the possibility of a set, which can only be a form
of pattern recognition. Pattern recognition doesn't arise from data
alone. Something has to experience something directly - I think that
the accounting of that experience as 'data' has to be an afterthought.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 04 May 2012, at 17:48, John Clark wrote:

 

> If the nothing of a vacuum is really full of potentials,

If you insist on the strictest definition of "nothing" which is not even the potential of producing anything, then even God Himself could not produce something from nothing; and this line of thought is quite clearly leading precisely nowhere.  

At the meta level of a theory, "nothing" and "everything" are basically equivalent with respect to the difficulty to be define them. 

In set theory, everything (the "universe" of set) is given by the unary intersection of the empty set, for example. And the quantum vacuum, needs the whole non trivial assumption of quantum mechanics.

The "no" and the "every" in "nothing and everything" depend on the logical assumptions. The real difficulty is in the definition or choice of the notion of "things".

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[ronaldheld]

Does nothing mean zero or the empty set in this thread?
Ronald

[John Clark]

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So you agree that it is impossible to have something come from nothing.

That depends on what you mean by "nothing".
1) Lack of matter, a vacuum.
2) Lack of matter and energy
3) Lack of matter and energy and space
4) Lack of matter and energy and space and time.
5) Lack of even the potential to produce something.

Science has valuable things to say about how something can come from nothing in all senses of the word "nothing" except for #5, and nobody else can say anything about that either, not even God, so that topic is a big bore. This is all explained in much greater detail in the book, WHICH YOU HAVE NOT READ.

> I think of them as incredibly shallow questions.

So you think explaining how from a few simple rules matter energy time and space turned into something while other things did not is not only shallow but  incredibly shallow. The only logical conclusion I can form from that is that somebody who really believes that is a incredibly shallow person.

> it's complete hype to claim that the universe comes from nothing. It's a slogan to sell books.

I don't mind ignorance in general but there is a form of aggressive ignorance I find distasteful, somebody who feels they don't need to know all that highfalutin book learning, somebody so ignorant they don't know they're ignorant, somebody who feels  their comments on a well respected physicist's book are worth sharing with others even though THEY HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK.
 

> I get the gist.

BULLSHIT! Anybody who says these are "incredibly shallow questions" is a fool. Full stop.
 

> I only point out as a fact that the universe could not come from something.

I see, so the universe can't come from nothing and now it can't come from something either, so obviously the universe does not exist and never has. Isn't philosophy wonderful.

> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-p...

  http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-mad...

>There is nothing surprising in either of these articles.

I would bet money you haven't read either one and at most skimmed them for 20 seconds; reading the actual book is of course out of the question, that would take away too much time contemplating your navel.

 John K Clark

  

 

[John Mikes]

Is it so hard to understand a "word"?

  -  N O T H I N G  -  is not a set of anything, no potential, no vacuum, no borders or characteristics just nothin'.

There is 'nothing' in it means an "it" - measureable and sizable. Folks-talk refers usually to a lack of a material content.

I agree with Bruno: it is just as hard to identify as everything (the zero vs.infinite - eternity problem) but if one identifies "nothing" it turns into something identified.

 

I wrote once a little silly 'ode' about ontology. I started:

     "In the beginning there was Nothingness.

     And when Nothingness realised it's nothingness

     It turned into Somethingness - an explanation..."

and so on, describing 'a' creation story.

 

JM

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[Craig Weinberg]

On May 5, 1:51 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > So you agree that it is impossible to have something come from nothing.
>
> That depends on what you mean by "nothing".
> 1) Lack of matter, a vacuum.
> 2) Lack of matter and energy
> 3) Lack of matter and energy and space
> 4) Lack of matter and energy and space and time.
> 5) Lack of even the potential to produce something.

For me it's simpler, because I think that energy is only the
experience of matter, time is the experience of relating sets of
experiences to each other, and space is the experience of relating
materials to each other. Nothing only has to mean lack of experience
of any kind.

>
> Science has valuable things to say about how something can come from
> nothing in all senses of the word "nothing" except for #5,

I have no problem with the idea that the current form of the universe
evolved from simpler forms. I don't think that many people do. Without
#5 though, the scientific cosmology is no better than any other
creation myth. It's more sophisticated, but no closer to explaining
why anything is created at all.

> and nobody else
> can say anything about that either, not even God,

No. I say something about that. I have explained that causality itself
is an epiphenomenon of time which is an emergent property of
experience or sense which is primordial. Sense is primordial not
because I can't think of how to explain it, but because I understand
what it actually is and how it relates to nothingness and singularity/
totality. I don't need anyone else's explanation, or God.

> so that topic is a big
> bore. This is all explained in much greater detail in the book, WHICH YOU
> HAVE NOT READ.

The book explains why it's own critical flaws are boring to point out,
hahaha. That's one way of stifling dissent. My views are explained on
my website WHICH YOU HAVE NOT READ. So what?

>
> > I think of them as incredibly shallow questions.
>
> So you think explaining how from a few simple rules matter energy time and
> space turned into something while other things did not is not only shallow
> but  incredibly shallow.

Oh, it's a great achievement, just as building a house out of
matchsticks or inventing the compass or something would be, but they
aren't particularly meaningful achievements as far as addressing the
depth of our experience.

> The only logical conclusion I can form from that
> is that somebody who really believes that is a incredibly shallow person.

That would be a simplistic logic which comes to such a knee-jerk
judgment.

>
> > it's complete hype to claim that the universe comes from nothing. It's a
> > slogan to sell books.
>
> I don't mind ignorance in general but there is a form of aggressive
> ignorance I find distasteful, somebody who feels they don't need to know
> all that highfalutin book learning, somebody so ignorant they don't know
> they're ignorant, somebody who feels  their comments on a well respected
> physicist's book are worth sharing with others even though THEY HAVE NOT
> READ THE BOOK.

Do you read Christian Apologetics? Theology? Art history? Literary
theory? Do you think that you aren't ignorant, or that your ignorance
isn't distasteful? My criticisms stand. The title of the book is
horseshit, and you know it.

>
> > > I get the gist.
>
> BULLSHIT! Anybody who says these are "incredibly shallow questions" is a
> fool. Full stop.

They are shallow to me. I'm not an engineer. I don't care about the
mechanism of the universe, I care only about the biggest possible
picture. I didn't mean to imply that others can't find them deep. Some
people find the study of sand deep. I was responding to your
accusations that questioning what it really means for something to
come from nothing is shallow. Some people do find it shallow. To me
those people are missing the bigger picture, but maybe they can't help
it.

>
> > > I only point out as a fact that the universe could not come from
> > something.
>
> I see, so the universe can't come from nothing and now it can't come from
> something either, so obviously the universe does not exist and never has.
> Isn't philosophy wonderful.

Sorry that was a typo. It should be nothing instead of something.

>
> >http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-p...
>
> >  http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-mad...
>
> > >There is nothing surprising in either of these articles.
>
> I would bet money you haven't read either one and at most skimmed them for
> 20 seconds; reading the actual book is of course out of the question, that
> would take away too much time contemplating your navel.

To me it's like arguing with a Christian fundamentalist who demands I
read the bible to understand his arguments. If your understanding of
their contents doesn't give you anything to say on the subject that is
remotely convincing or surprising to me in any way, why would I bother
chasing your views down for you?

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 05 May 2012, at 13:49, ronaldheld wrote:

> Does nothing mean zero or the empty set in this thread?

There are as many notions of nothing/everything that there are notion
of things.

"Nothing" can be interpreted in many ways, differently for each theory
candidate to be a theory of everything (ontology/epistemologies).

The everything idea in this list is that conceptually simple theory
are preferable than complex theory, but conceptually simple theory
tend to multiply the possibilities and the ontologies, and the taking
into account of the first person view entails such possibilities
interfere.

Comp explains as most as possible why there is something rather
nothing. UDA makes elementary arithmetic enough, and elementary
arithmetic can already explain why you can't get them with less. So
our belief in {0, 1, 2, ...} is mysterious, and *has to be*
mysterious. But then we have the explanation of the emergence of
quanta and qualia from {0, 1, ...} and the + and * laws.
Any first order logic specification of a Turing universal system would
do. The key discovery is the discovery of the universal numbers, and
the ways they reflect themselves in the arithmetical truth/reality.

Bruno

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[John Clark]

On Sat, May 5, 2012  John Mikes <jam...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Is it so hard to understand a "word"?

Yes, the word "nothing" keeps evolving. Until about a hundred years ago "nothing" just meant a vacuum, space empty of any matter; then a few years later the meaning was expanded to include lacking any energy too, then still later it meant also not having space, and then it meant not even having time. Something that is lacking matter energy time and space may not be the purest form of nothing but it is, you must admit, a pretty pitiful "thing", and if science can explain (and someday it very well may be able to) how our world with all it's beautiful complexity came to be from such modest beginnings then that would not be a bad days work, and to call such activities "incredibly shallow" as some on this list have is just idiotic.        
 

> N O T H I N G  -  is not a set of anything, no potential

Then the question "can something come from nothing?" has a obvious and extremely dull answer.

> I wrote once a little silly 'ode' about ontology. I started:

     "In the beginning there was Nothingness.

     And when Nothingness realised it's nothingness

     It turned into Somethingness

Then your version of nothing had something, the potential to produce something. I also note the use of the word "when", thus time, which is something, existed in your "nothing" universe as well as potential.

  John K Clark

[R AM]

Some thoughts about "nothing":

- If nothing has no properties, and a limitation is considered a property, then "nothing" cannot have any limitations, including the limitation of generating "something". Therefore, "something" may come from "nothing". 

- Given that something exists, it is possible that something exists (obviously). The later would be true even if "nothing" was the case. Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing with the possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.

- Why should "nothing" be the default state? I think this is based on the intuition that "nothing" would require no explanation, whereas "something" requires an explanation. However, given that the possibility of something existing is necessarily true, an explanation would be required for why there is "nothing" instead of "something".

- There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)

- I think the intuition that "nothing" requires less explanation than the universe we observe is based on a generalization of the idea of classical empty space. However, this intuition is based on what we know about *this* universe (i.e. empty space is simpler than things existing in it). But why this intuition about *our* reality should be extrapolated to metaphysics?

- I think that the important question is why this universe instead of any other universe? (including "nothing").

Ricardo.

[Richard Ruquist]

Nothing does not exist...

Richard

[John Clark]

On Sat, May 5, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

>> That depends on what you mean by "nothing".
  1) Lack of matter, a vacuum.
  2) Lack of matter and energy
  3) Lack of matter and energy and space
  4) Lack of matter and energy and space and time.
  5) Lack of even the potential to produce something.

> Without #5 though, the scientific cosmology is no better than any other creation myth.

Good heavens, what a dumb thing to say!  Even if science can't explain how the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics came to be, if it can explain how those few simple laws generated time and space and matter and energy and life you think that's no better than Greek mythology?! Idiotic. And what the hell do you expect science or religion or anything else to do with #5? You define X as something that can not produce Y and then you demand to know how X produces Y.  Nuts.  

> I have explained that causality itself is an epiphenomenon of time which is an emergent property of experience or sense which

Causality is not nothing, neither phenomenon nor epiphenomenon is nothing, time is not nothing, experience is not nothing, sense is not nothing, and "emergent property" just means X created Y but I don't know how. You really haven't explained much now have you.

>> BULLSHIT! Anybody who says these are "incredibly shallow questions" is a fool. Full stop.

> They are shallow to me. I'm not an engineer.

I know, that's part of the problem.

>I don't care about the mechanism of the universe, I care only about the biggest possible picture.

You think you can answer the deepest question in the universe but you don't even bother to glance at the many many profound questions that science already has answers to, many found centuries ago. Gaining wisdom takes work but you are not willing to put in the time, and so as a result you have no more knowledge of how the universe actually operates than your average 18'th century gentleman. You Sir are a dilettante.  

> Sorry that was a typo. It should be nothing instead of something.

Easy mistake to make, the difference between the two is so small.

  John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Sun, May 6, 2012  <ramr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)

EXCELLENT!  I wish I'd said that; Picasso said good artists borrow but great artists steal, so no doubt some day I will indeed say that.

  John K Clark

[Stephen P. King]

On 5/6/2012 1:06 PM, R AM wrote:

Some thoughts about "nothing":

Hi Ricardo,

    I like these thoughts (as they imply questions!)!

- If nothing has no properties, and a limitation is considered a property, then "nothing" cannot have any limitations, including the limitation of generating "something". Therefore, "something" may come from "nothing".

    Can nothing be treated as an object itself? Can we "hang" properties on it? Are we actually talking about "substance" as synonomous with what the philosophers of old used to use as the object minus its properties? I like to use the word "Existence" in this case, as it would seen to naturally include "nothing" and "something" as its most trivial dual categories.

   [Side note: This is where we start to see that our words can be such to sometimes have only other words as referents and sometimes have actual objects (not words) as referents.  (I wish we could get a semiotic theory expert to join us! Can any one channel Charles S. Peirce for us?)]

- Given that something exists, it is possible that something exists (obviously). The later would be true even if "nothing" was the case. Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing with the possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.

    Does Nothingness exist? Can Nothingness non-exist? At what point are we playing games with words and at what point are we being meaningful? You are pointing out how "possibility" seems to be implicitly tied to the relation between something and nothing. In my reasoning this is why I consider existence as "necessary possibility". Unfortunately, this consideration suffers from the ambiguity inherent in semiotics known as the figure-frame relation. Is the word we use to denote or connote a referent? What if we mean to use both denotative and connotative uses?

- Why should "nothing" be the default state? I think this is based on the intuition that "nothing" would require no explanation, whereas "something" requires an explanation. However, given that the possibility of something existing is necessarily true, an explanation would be required for why there is "nothing" instead of "something".

    I agree. We might even think or intuit "nothing" as the absolute absence of 'everything' : the sum of all particulars that piece-wise and collection-wise are not-nothing; whereas 'something' is a special case of 'everything'; a particular case of everything.

- There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)

    But this statement implicitly assumes a measure that itself, then, implies a common basis for comparison. Is there a set, class, category or other 'collection' that has all of the forms, modalities, aspects, etc. of something along with nothing? Would this set, class, category, etc. have a denotative/connotative name? At what point does it become impossible to 'name' something?

- I think the intuition that "nothing" requires less explanation than the universe we observe is based on a generalization of the idea of classical empty space. However, this intuition is based on what we know about *this* universe (i.e. empty space is simpler than things existing in it). But why this intuition about *our* reality should be extrapolated to metaphysics?

    And it is "explanations' that we are interested in here and thus we spend time and thought here on these words. ;-) I would like to point out that 'nothing' does seem to require a lot less explanation simply because it is defined in terms of the negation of what is already potentially in the mind of the reader of the word and thus using a is a connotative definition. We tend not to think much of it, but 'Nothing' = Sum of {not a cat, not a dot, not a fist, not a person, not a word, ... }
    We require concepts like the complement of a set in our very thoughts... I like to use the concept of an equivalence class to consider these questions. We could say that Nothing is the equivalence relation on the class of {not a cat, not a dot, not a fist, not a person, not a word, ... }

- I think that the important question is why this universe instead of any other universe? (including "nothing").

    I suspect that the answer to this question is trivial: We see this universe because it is the only one that is minimally (?) consistent with our ability to both observe it and communicate with each other about it.

Ricardo.

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 6:24 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, May 5, 2012  John Mikes <jam...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Is it so hard to understand a "word"?

Yes, the word "nothing" keeps evolving. Until about a hundred years ago "nothing" just meant a vacuum, space empty of any matter; then a few years later the meaning was expanded to include lacking any energy too, then still later it meant also not having space, and then it meant not even having time. Something that is lacking matter energy time and space may not be the purest form of nothing but it is, you must admit, a pretty pitiful "thing", and if science can explain (and someday it very well may be able to) how our world with all it's beautiful complexity came to be from such modest beginnings then that would not be a bad days work, and to call such activities "incredibly shallow" as some on this list have is just idiotic.        
 

> N O T H I N G  -  is not a set of anything, no potential

Then the question "can something come from nothing?" has a obvious and extremely dull answer.

> I wrote once a little silly 'ode' about ontology. I started:

     "In the beginning there was Nothingness.

     And when Nothingness realised it's nothingness

     It turned into Somethingness

Then your version of nothing had something, the potential to produce something. I also note the use of the word "when", thus time, which is something, existed in your "nothing" universe as well as potential.

  John K Clark

-- 
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." 
~ Francis Bacon

[Craig Weinberg]

On May 6, 1:06 pm, R AM <ramra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Some thoughts about "nothing":
>
> - If nothing has no properties, and a limitation is considered a property,
> then "nothing" cannot have any limitations, including the limitation of
> generating "something". Therefore, "something" may come from "nothing".

Nice one, but I think it breaks because of the symbol grounding
problem. The lack of a reason to prevent something doesn't create it
out of nothing though. Properties don't actually exist independently
of things and experiences. They are not causally efficacious at all,
only a way we can understand our experiences. Categories,
associations, groups, properties, etc are pattern recognition events
of an analytical mind, not actual principles which constrain reality.

If nothing can generate something because there is no law against it,
then it can also not generate anything since there is no law against
the impossibility of something either. To me, this is a good example
of why computation cannot precede awareness. The rules of arithmetic
would have to come from more rules that are ultimately no more likely
to make sense as no sense...unless you first have a such thing as
sense-making to guide the rules.

>
> - Given that something exists, it is possible that something exists
> (obviously). The later would be true even if "nothing" was the case.
> Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing with the
> possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.
>
> - Why should "nothing" be the default state?

Yes! That's what I'm saying. If there is a default state, I nominate
everythingness, out of which a virtual nothingness (time and space)
can emerge. Sense is the diffraction between the default state and the
innumerable diffracted states within states. If you turn your original
assertion upside down, you might see that in the context of
everythingness or totality/singularity, it would be correct to say
that since there is nothing stopping everything from existing
eternally outside of time if time were only a relativistic perception,
then we should hypothesize that it does.

> I think this is based on the
> intuition that "nothing" would require no explanation, whereas "something"
> requires an explanation. However, given that the possibility of something
> existing is necessarily true, an explanation would be required for why
> there is "nothing" instead of "something".

Right. It's an illogical jump. But 'nothing' as a bubble in the
totality/singularity makes perfect sense as space (vacuum) and time
(memory, or 'not-now'). Nothing is symmetrically expressed as a
spatial gap between objects and an enfolding of temporal subjects.

>
> - There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing
> existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)
>
> - I think the intuition that "nothing" requires less explanation than the
> universe we observe is based on a generalization of the idea of classical
> empty space. However, this intuition is based on what we know about *this*
> universe (i.e. empty space is simpler than things existing in it). But why
> this intuition about *our* reality should be extrapolated to metaphysics?
>
> - I think that the important question is why this universe instead of any
> other universe? (including "nothing").

Yes. My answer is that it is a human universe for us because humans
are who we happen to be. I don't think that this anthropic view
supports an MWI type inevitability of all universes necessarily
though. I think the whole thing is guided by sense, significance, and
entropy.

Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

On May 6, 1:33 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, May 5, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >> That depends on what you mean by "nothing".
> >>   1) Lack of matter, a vacuum.
> >>   2) Lack of matter and energy
> >>   3) Lack of matter and energy and space
> >>   4) Lack of matter and energy and space and time.
> >>   5) Lack of even the potential to produce something.
>
> > > Without #5 though, the scientific cosmology is no better than any other
> > creation myth.
>
> Good heavens, what a dumb thing to say!

What an irrelevant, ad hominem opinion!

> Even if science can't explain how
> the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics came to be, if it can explain how
> those few simple laws generated time and space and matter and energy and
> life you think that's no better than Greek mythology?

I didn't say that. I say that it is no better than Greek mythology at
explaining the origin of the universe. It may have many many more
practical applications, but as far as explaining where the universe
came from, it's still a 21st century creation myth (really probably a
holdover from 20th century tbh).

>! Idiotic. And what
> the hell do you expect science or religion or anything else to do with #5?
> You define X as something that can not produce Y and then you demand to
> know how X produces Y.  Nuts.

#5 isn't a problem once we understand that sense is primordial.
Nothing nuts about it, although it is unfamiliar to many people.
People who have some degree of expertise with Indian cosmology seem to
find the idea quite agreeable.

>
> > I have explained that causality itself is an epiphenomenon of time which
> > is an emergent property of experience or sense which
>
> Causality is not nothing, neither phenomenon nor epiphenomenon is nothing,
> time is not nothing, experience is not nothing, sense is not nothing, and
> "emergent property" just means X created Y but I don't know how. You really
> haven't explained much now have you.

Sense is not nothing. Nothing comes from sense. Sense is primary. You
are too busy spitting and condescending to notice that I have
explained everything that I claim to.

>
> >> BULLSHIT! Anybody who says these are "incredibly shallow questions" is a
> >> fool. Full stop.
>
> > > They are shallow to me. I'm not an engineer.
>
> I know, that's part of the problem.

I think it's part of the solution. As the saying goes, if all you have
is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

>
> >I don't care about the mechanism of the universe, I care only about the
> > biggest possible picture.
>
> You think you can answer the deepest question in the universe but you don't
> even bother to glance at the many many profound questions that science
> already has answers to, many found centuries ago.

What specifically are you talking about that you accuse me of being
ignorant of?

> Gaining wisdom takes work
> but you are not willing to put in the time, and so as a result you have no
> more knowledge of how the universe actually operates than your average
> 18'th century gentleman. You Sir are a dilettante.

You confuse inner wisdom with external information. Your argument
continues to be ad hominem fallacy.

>
> > Sorry that was a typo. It should be nothing instead of something.
>
> Easy mistake to make, the difference between the two is so small.

It can seem that way sometimes.

Craig

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 06.05.2012 20:04 Stephen P. King said the following:

...

> [Side note: This is where we start to see that our words can be such to
> sometimes have only other words as referents and sometimes have actual
> objects (not words) as referents. (I wish we could get a semiotic theory
> expert to join us! Can any one channel Charles S. Peirce

> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce> for us?)]
>

You will find nowadays even biosemiotics - see four lectures on this
subject:

http://embryogenesisexplained.com/2012/03/a-short-course-on-biosemiotics-1.html

Evgenii

[Stephen P. King]

Hi Evgenii,

Thanks!

[R AM]

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net> wrote:

Hi Stephen,

 

- If nothing has no properties, and a limitation is considered a property, then "nothing" cannot have any limitations, including the limitation of generating "something". Therefore, "something" may come from "nothing".

    Can nothing be treated as an object itself? Can we "hang" properties on it?

Some people claim that something cannot come from "nothing". I think they are hanging a property on it.

 

Are we actually talking about "substance" as synonomous with what the philosophers of old used to use as the object minus its properties? I like to use the word "Existence" in this case, as it would seen to naturally include "nothing" and "something" as its most trivial dual categories.

- Given that something exists, it is possible that something exists (obviously). The later would be true even if "nothing" was the case. Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing with the possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.

    Does Nothingness exist? Can Nothingness non-exist? At what point are we playing games with words and at what point are we being meaningful?

I think a proper philosopher would say that "nothing" is the state of affairs (rather than "nothing" exists).

 

You are pointing out how "possibility" seems to be implicitly tied to the relation between something and nothing. In my reasoning this is why I consider existence as "necessary possibility". Unfortunately, this consideration suffers from the ambiguity inherent in semiotics known as the figure-frame relation. Is the word we use to denote or connote a referent? What if we mean to use both denotative and connotative uses?

One way of intuiting "nothing" is that which remains when you have removed everything. In fact, I believe that the philosophical "nothing" is nothing else than classical empty space elevated to metaphysical heights. The problem is that even after you have removed everything (including time and space), there is something that cannot be removed: the possibility of something existing. It would seem that "nothing" (or rather, NOTHING) shouldn't allow even for the logical possibility of something existing. But given that something exists, this possibility cannot be removed. That is why I said that the idea of "nothing" and the logical possibility of existence, sharing the same state of affairs, is bizarre (if not incompatible).

 

- Why should "nothing" be the default state? I think this is based on the intuition that "nothing" would require no explanation, whereas "something" requires an explanation. However, given that the possibility of something existing is necessarily true, an explanation would be required for why there is "nothing" instead of "something".

    I agree. We might even think or intuit "nothing" as the absolute absence of 'everything' : the sum of all particulars that piece-wise and collection-wise are not-nothing; whereas 'something' is a special case of 'everything'; a particular case of everything.

Probably the best way of defining "nothing" is the absence of everything (not this, not that, ...). But isn't it funny that in order to define "nothing" you have to accept the possibility of everything?

- There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)

    But this statement implicitly assumes a measure that itself, then, implies a common basis for comparison. Is there a set, class, category or other 'collection' that has all of the forms, modalities, aspects, etc. of something along with nothing?

I guess it couldn't be a set.

In any case, when people ask the question "why something rather than nothing", they implicitely assume that there is some sort of priority for "nothing" over something.

My short answer to "why something rather than nothing?" is "why not?".

 

 We tend not to think much of it, but 'Nothing' = Sum of {not a cat, not a dot, not a fist, not a person, not a word, ... }

I agree, but why the absence of things requires less explanation than the presence of things?

 

    I suspect that the answer to this question is trivial: We see this universe because it is the only one that is minimally (?) consistent with our ability to both observe it and communicate with each other about it.

OK, now prove the mass of the electron from these axioms :-)

Ricardo.

[R AM]

Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing with the possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.

    Does Nothingness exist? Can Nothingness non-exist? At what point are we playing games with words and at what point are we being meaningful?

I think a proper philosopher would say that "nothing" is the state of affairs (rather than "nothing" exists).

By the way, Stephen, I didn't mean you are not a proper philosopher, but me :-) (it was me that used the sentence "nothing co-exists with ...").

Ricardo.

[Pierz]

The question, "Why is there anything at all?" used to do my head in when I was a kid. I can still sometimes get into kind of head-exploding moment sometimes thinking about it. Russell's answer to me remains the most satisfying, even though in a sense it is a non-answer, a simple ackowledgement that there is no logical reason why there has to be a cause of 'everything' even though everything may have a cause. Krauss's argument - I admit I haven't read the book (yet), so I am speaking of what I understand rhe hist of his argument to be - may be interesting physics/cosmology, but I agree with the critics that it doesn't really get to the bottom of the proverbial 'turtle stack', and it shouldn't claim to, because such a bottom turtle is in principle impossible.

John Clarke claims that a 'nothing' that contains the laws of quantum mechanics and the potential to produce time, space and matter is a very pitiful something if it is a something at all. But I think it sneaks a lot more into its pitiful somethingness than at first meets the eye. Not only the laws of quantum mechanics, but the laws of logic and mathematics without which quantum mechanics could not be formulated or expressed - as Bruno woukd be quick to point out. I really must read the book to understand how this vacuum can be unstable in the absence of time - doesn't stability or instability depend on time by implying the possibility or otherwise of change? But even accepting this it seems to me that in order to reason about the properties of this vacuum (e.g., its instability or otherwise) means that the vacuum must exist. Getting what seems like extremely close to non-existence is still a million miles (actually an infinite distance) from actual non-existence, because what defines the distinction between non-existence and existence is not anything to do with being extremely minimal. An extremely small number, say 10 to the -100000, is extremely minimal, but still not zero, and still an infinite distance, in a sense, from zero.

Krauss's argument may satisfy the cosmologist's desire to see the cause of the universe reduced to something extremely simple, but it does not satisfy the wondering child or philosopher who is thunderstruck by the strangeness of there being any existence at all, however simple or rudimentary its origins. It's wrong to say such a child or philosopher is caught in a pointless mind loop trying asking how something that does not even have the potential to produce anything can, nevertheless, produce something. Of course that is absurd. The question in my mind as a wondering child was never 'How did the nothing that must have come before the universe produce the universe?' It was my mind chasing the chain of causation of things and realizing that, whatever that chain looked like, I could never trace it all the way back to absolute nothing - so why this mysterious beingness? The fact is it's beyond reason. Call it a gift or a miracle and you're as close to it as anything. God is no answer, mind you - he's just another spurious bottom turtle. God, laws of quantum mechanics: it's just different attempts to stop the rot of infinite regress, hammer in a wedge somewhere and say "Because". Why do the law of quantum physics exist? Because. Why does God, the UD, the Buddhist void exist? Because.

As for the remark about nothingness having only one way of being and there being a lot more ways of existing, it's cute, but it's sophistry. Non-being is not a countable way of being. It's the absence of being - obviously - so can't be presented as one among a myriad of possible configurations of the universe.

[R AM]

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Pierz <pie...@gmail.com> wrote:

 The question in my mind as a wondering child was never 'How did the nothing that must have come before the universe produce the universe?' It was my mind chasing the chain of causation of things and realizing that, whatever that chain looked like, I could never trace it all the way back to absolute nothing -

There is an interesting point here, although probably not what you intended. What you say is true, you cannot trace it all the way back to absolute nothing, because there is no reverse physical process that transforms something into "nothing" (at least, not into absolute nothing). Or equivalently, there is no physical process that transforms "absolute nothing" into something. But if that is the case, why are you so sure that "nothing" must have come before?

As for the remark about nothingness having only one way of being and there being a lot more ways of existing, it's cute, but it's sophistry. Non-being is not a countable way of being. It's the absence of being - obviously - so can't be presented as one among a myriad of possible configurations of the universe.

I agree "nothing" is not a configuration of things, but I think it could be considered as one element belonging to an abstract space. Let's consider this universe and the abstract operation of removing things. We can remove the Sun, Andromeda, etc. "Nothing" is what is left after removing all things (including space, time, ...). It's one among many. It's not that different from 0 being a natural number or the empty set being a set.

 

Ricardo.

[Richard Ruquist]

The combination of MWI and string physics may suggest a reason why quantum physics must exist and it has to do with the string landscape plus the acceptance on your part of some of the (outrageous) claims of string theory. I say that the most outrageous claim of string theory is that the compactified dimensions, (the so-called Calabi-Yau Manifolds (CYMs), which are discrete ball-like particles a thousand Planck lengths in diameter) possess the constants and laws of physics. So assuming that every CYM is identical in our universe, then the number of possible different universes depends on the number of distinct versions of the CYMs, which is the so-called String Landscape.

Now according to Yau in his book "The Shape of Inner Space" each CYM particle has 500 topological holes, more or less I presume. And a constraining higher-order electromagnetic flux winds through these holes. Now if the CYMs contain the laws of quantum physics, it is reasonable, but perhaps not necessary, that that quantum physics applies to this flux and that it may exist in any number of quantum states. To determine the string landscape, string theorists have assumed the nice round number of 10 for the number of quantum states the flux may possess. If so then the number of possible different configurations of a CYM is 10^500. (For comparison the number of Planck volumes in our universe is at least 10^175 or the number of CYMs is about 10^165).

So in a MWI context, even if each universe in the multiverse required a distinct CYM, there seems to be more than enough to go around. Even if the number of flux quantum states were say equal to the CYM dimensionality (6), the number of distinct CYMs  at 10^390 seems to provide ample MWI universes, even for a Omniverse. But if the CYMs were like a classical computer rather than a quantum computer, the number of distinct CYMs at 2^500= 10^150 seems insufficient for MWI.

Therefore if all these assumptions are acceptable to you, quantum physics must apply to the CYMs for there to be enough distinct CYMs to support MWI. That is a reason why we have quantum physics (Perhaps a LoL rather than a QED is appropriate here)

Richard

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[Craig Weinberg]

On May 7, 9:42 am, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Krauss's argument may satisfy the cosmologist's desire to see the cause of the universe reduced to something extremely simple, but it does not satisfy the wondering child or philosopher who is thunderstruck by the strangeness of there being any existence at all, however simple or rudimentary its origins. It's wrong to say such a child or philosopher is caught in a pointless mind loop trying asking how something that does not even have the potential to produce anything can, nevertheless, produce something. Of course that is absurd. The question in my mind as a wondering child was never 'How did the nothing that must have come before the universe produce the universe?' It was my mind chasing the chain of causation of things and realizing that, whatever that chain looked like, I could never trace it all the way back to absolute nothing - so why this mysterious beingness? The fact is it's beyond reason.

Yes, it is beyond reason, but it is not beyond sense. If we model the
cosmos with sense as the ground of being instead of absolute nothing,
then neither physics or mathematics are mysterious. They are lowest
common denominator experiences. The longest lasting, most general ways
to make sense.

Call it a gift or a miracle and you're as close to it as anything. God
is no answer, mind you - he's just another spurious bottom turtle.
God, laws of quantum mechanics: it's just different attempts to stop
the rot of infinite regress, hammer in a wedge somewhere and say
"Because".  Why do the law of quantum physics exist? Because. Why does
God, the UD, the Buddhist void exist? Because.

Exactly. My approach is instead of because, I would answer, because we
are human beings right now and that is part of how it seems to human
beings who live here and now.

'why do we think that quantum physics exist?' because we have built
instruments that consistently confirm our theories that it exists.
'why do people think that God, the UD, the Buddhist void exist'?
because they are able to make sense of their experience as human
beings, mathematicians, religious disciples, etc that way. It is how
our minds feel themselves in the reflection or shadow they cast as
their life/world/universe.

Craig

[meekerdb]

On 5/7/2012 6:42 AM, Pierz wrote:
> The question, "Why is there anything at all?" used to do my head in when I was a kid. I can still sometimes get into kind of head-exploding moment sometimes thinking about it. Russell's answer to me remains the most satisfying, even though in a sense it is a non-answer, a simple ackowledgement that there is no logical reason why there has to be a cause of 'everything' even though everything may have a cause. Krauss's argument - I admit I haven't read the book (yet), so I am speaking of what I understand rhe hist of his argument to be - may be interesting physics/cosmology, but I agree with the critics that it doesn't really get to the bottom of the proverbial 'turtle stack', and it shouldn't claim to, because such a bottom turtle is in principle impossible.
>
> John Clarke claims that a 'nothing' that contains the laws of quantum mechanics and the potential to produce time, space and matter is a very pitiful something if it is a something at all. But I think it sneaks a lot more into its pitiful somethingness than at first meets the eye. Not only the laws of quantum mechanics, but the laws of logic and mathematics without which quantum mechanics could not be formulated or expressed - as Bruno woukd be quick to point out.

The 'laws' of logic are just the rules of language that ensure we don't issue
contradictory statements. The 'laws' of quantum mechanics also follow from simple
assumptions about the world having symmetries (c.f. Russell Standish's "Theory of Nothing"
and Vic Stenger's "The Comprehensible Cosmos") and having a symmetry is a kind of
'nothing', i.e. having no distinguishing characteristic under some transformation.
Stenger's book is more detailed and explicit than Krauss'.

Brent

[John Clark]

On Sun, May 6, 2012  Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>I'm not an engineer.

 

>> I know, that's part of the problem.

> I think it's part of the solution. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It's far easier to get a reputation as a good philosopher than a good engineer because you can't fake it. If a engineer is full of shit there is no way to hide it, the bridge falls down or the laptop catches on fire or the power grid dies and plunges the nation into darkness and all the world knows he's a idiot, but a philosopher can hide his ineptitude by saying things that can never be proved or disproved in his lifetime or expressing platitudes in pretentious language that sounds much deeper than they really are or by expressing his personal preferences as if they were universal truths and not just a matter of taste.

To keep his job a engineer needs to be right, or at least not dead wrong, nearly 100% of the time because if he is dead wrong people could quite literally end up dead, but a philosopher can never be right and still get tenure. When a engineer makes a blunder it's front page news but when a philosopher makes a blunder few know or care and he never misses a paycheck. The engineer has by far the harder job.

  John K Clark

[meekerdb]

On 5/7/2012 8:30 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:

The combination of MWI and string physics may suggest a reason why quantum physics must exist and it has to do with the string landscape plus the acceptance on your part of some of the (outrageous) claims of string theory. I say that the most outrageous claim of string theory is that the compactified dimensions, (the so-called Calabi-Yau Manifolds (CYMs), which are discrete ball-like particles a thousand Planck lengths in diameter) possess the constants and laws of physics. So assuming that every CYM is identical in our universe, then the number of possible different universes depends on the number of distinct versions of the CYMs, which is the so-called String Landscape.

Now according to Yau in his book "The Shape of Inner Space" each CYM particle has 500 topological holes, more or less I presume. And a constraining higher-order electromagnetic flux winds through these holes. Now if the CYMs contain the laws of quantum physics, it is reasonable, but perhaps not necessary, that that quantum physics applies to this flux and that it may exist in any number of quantum states. To determine the string landscape, string theorists have assumed the nice round number of 10 for the number of quantum states the flux may possess. If so then the number of possible different configurations of a CYM is 10^500. (For comparison the number of Planck volumes in our universe is at least 10^175 or the number of CYMs is about 10^165).

So in a MWI context, even if each universe in the multiverse required a distinct CYM, there seems to be more than enough to go around. Even if the number of flux quantum states were say equal to the CYM dimensionality (6), the number of distinct CYMs  at 10^390 seems to provide ample MWI universes, even for a Omniverse. But if the CYMs were like a classical computer rather than a quantum computer, the number of distinct CYMs at 2^500= 10^150 seems insufficient for MWI.

I don't see how you're connecting MWI to different string physics?  MWI is about different observations in *the same* physical universe.  It has nothing to do with different effective quantum fields or different symmetry breaking.

Brent

Therefore if all these assumptions are acceptable to you, quantum physics must apply to the CYMs for there to be enough distinct CYMs to support MWI. That is a reason why we have quantum physics (Perhaps a LoL rather than a QED is appropriate here)

Richard

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Pierz <pie...@gmail.com> wrote:

The question, "Why is there anything at all?" used to do my head in when I was a kid. I can still sometimes get into kind of head-exploding moment sometimes thinking about it. Russell's answer to me remains the most satisfying, even though in a sense it is a non-answer, a simple ackowledgement that there is no logical reason why there has to be a cause of 'everything' even though everything may have a cause. Krauss's argument - I admit I haven't read the book (yet), so I am speaking of what I understand rhe hist of his argument to be - may be interesting physics/cosmology, but I agree with the critics that it doesn't really get to the bottom of the proverbial 'turtle stack', and it shouldn't claim to, because such a bottom turtle is in principle impossible.

John Clarke claims that a 'nothing' that contains the laws of quantum mechanics and the potential to produce time, space and matter is a very pitiful something if it is a something at all. But I think it sneaks a lot more into its pitiful somethingness than at first meets the eye. Not only the laws of quantum mechanics, but the laws of logic and mathematics without which quantum mechanics could not be formulated or expressed - as Bruno woukd be quick to point out. I really must read the book to understand how this vacuum can be unstable in the absence of time - doesn't stability or instability depend on time by implying the possibility or otherwise of change? But even accepting this it seems to me that in order to reason about the properties of this vacuum (e.g., its instability or otherwise) means that the vacuum must exist. Getting what seems like extremely close to non-existence is still a million miles (actually an infinite distance) from actual non-existence, because what defines the distinction between non-existence and existence is not anything to do with being extremely minimal. An extremely small number, say 10 to the -100000, is extremely minimal, but still not zero, and still an infinite distance, in a sense, from zero.

Krauss's argument may satisfy the cosmologist's desire to see the cause of the universe reduced to something extremely simple, but it does not satisfy the wondering child or philosopher who is thunderstruck by the strangeness of there being any existence at all, however simple or rudimentary its origins. It's wrong to say such a child or philosopher is caught in a pointless mind loop trying asking how something that does not even have the potential to produce anything can, nevertheless, produce something. Of course that is absurd. The question in my mind as a wondering child was never 'How did the nothing that must have come before the universe produce the universe?' It was my mind chasing the chain of causation of things and realizing that, whatever that chain looked like, I could never trace it all the way back to absolute nothing - so why this mysterious beingness? The fact is it's beyond reason. Call it a gift or a miracle and you're as close to it as anything. God is no answer, mind you - he's just another spurious bottom turtle. God, laws of quantum mechanics: it's just different attempts to stop the rot of infinite regress, hammer in a wedge somewhere and say "Because".  Why do the law of quantum physics exist? Because. Why does God, the UD, the Buddhist void exist? Because.

As for the remark about nothingness having only one way of being and there being a lot more ways of existing, it's cute, but it's sophistry. Non-being is not a countable way of being. It's the absence of being - obviously - so can't be presented as one among a myriad of possible configurations of the universe.

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[Craig Weinberg]

On May 7, 1:25 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:

> The 'laws' of logic are just the rules of language that ensure we don't issue
> contradictory statements.

You have to have logic to begin with to conceive of the desirability
of avoiding contradiction. Something has to put the 'contra' into our
'diction'.

 The 'laws' of quantum mechanics also follow from simple
> assumptions about the world having symmetries (c.f. Russell Standish's "Theory of Nothing"
> and Vic Stenger's "The Comprehensible Cosmos") and having a symmetry is a kind of
> 'nothing', i.e. having no distinguishing characteristic under some transformation.

Invariance is one aspect of symmetry, but you cannot reduce symmetry
to being a 'kind of nothing'. Symmetry cannot be anything less than a
feature of sense.

Craig

[Craig Weinberg]

On May 7, 1:42 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:

The engineer has a harder job, just as it requires more effort to
hammer a nail than it does to write with a pen. That doesn't make him
better equipped to address the nature of the cosmos as a whole. Being
literal minded is appropriate for literal tasks - building bridges,
inventing the combustion engine, etc. If the universe is what I
suspect it is, then it is only half literal, with the figurative half
being the more relevant 'head end'.

Craig

[Richard Ruquist]

John,

On the subject of engineering blunders, here is the most catastrophic engineering blunder humanity has ever faced. It could make North America uninhabitable.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/fukushima-fuel-pool-is-urgent-national-security-issue-for-america-top-threat-facing-humanity?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8179b0de4d-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email 

[meekerdb]

On 5/7/2012 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> On May 7, 1:25 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> The 'laws' of logic are just the rules of language that ensure we don't issue
>> contradictory statements.
> You have to have logic to begin with to conceive of the desirability
> of avoiding contradiction. Something has to put the 'contra' into our
> 'diction'.

No, you only need to understand negation, to have a language with the word 'not'. Then if
someone says to you "X" and "not-X" you immediately realize the need to avoid
contradiction, because a contradiction fails to express anything.

>
> The 'laws' of quantum mechanics also follow from simple
>> assumptions about the world having symmetries (c.f. Russell Standish's "Theory of Nothing"
>> and Vic Stenger's "The Comprehensible Cosmos") and having a symmetry is a kind of
>> 'nothing', i.e. having no distinguishing characteristic under some transformation.
> Invariance is one aspect of symmetry,

It's an essential aspect. A symmetry is a property that is invariant under some
transformation.

> but you cannot reduce symmetry
> to being a 'kind of nothing'. Symmetry cannot be anything less than a
> feature of sense.

I can if I explicitly say what kind it is - which I did.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

On 07 May 2012, at 15:42, Pierz wrote:

The question, "Why is there anything at all?" used to do my head in when I was a kid. I can still sometimes get into kind of head-exploding moment sometimes thinking about it. Russell's answer to me remains the most satisfying, even though in a sense it is a non-answer, a simple ackowledgement that there is no logical reason why there has to be a cause of 'everything' even though everything may have a cause. Krauss's argument - I admit I haven't read the book (yet), so I am speaking of what I understand rhe hist of his argument to be - may be interesting physics/cosmology, but I agree with the critics that it doesn't really get to the bottom of the proverbial 'turtle stack', and it shouldn't claim to, because such a bottom turtle is in principle impossible. 

John Clarke claims that a 'nothing' that contains the laws of quantum mechanics and the potential to produce time, space and matter is a very pitiful something if it is a something at all. But I think it sneaks a lot more into its pitiful somethingness than at first meets the eye. Not only the laws of quantum mechanics, but the laws of logic and mathematics without which quantum mechanics could not be formulated or expressed - as Bruno woukd be quick to point out. I really must read the book to understand how this vacuum can be unstable in the absence of time -

The problem is that physicists have not yet succeed in marrying QM and GR, which is needed to get a quantum theory of space-time. You can bet on strings or on loop gravity though, or on the Dewitt-Wheeler equation, which, actually make physical time vanishing completely from the big picture. It is an internal parameter only.

doesn't stability or instability depend on time by implying the possibility or otherwise of change? But even accepting this it seems to me that in order to reason about the properties of this vacuum (e.g., its instability or otherwise) means that the vacuum must exist. Getting what seems like extremely close to non-existence is still a million miles (actually an infinite distance) from actual non-existence, because what defines the distinction between non-existence and existence is not anything to do with being extremely minimal. An extremely small number, say 10 to the -100000, is extremely minimal, but still not zero, and still an infinite distance, in a sense, from zero. 

Krauss's argument may satisfy the cosmologist's desire to see the cause of the universe reduced to something extremely simple, but it does not satisfy the wondering child or philosopher who is thunderstruck by the strangeness of there being any existence at all, however simple or rudimentary its origins. It's wrong to say such a child or philosopher is caught in a pointless mind loop trying asking how something that does not even have the potential to produce anything can, nevertheless, produce something. Of course that is absurd. The question in my mind as a wondering child was never 'How did the nothing that must have come before the universe produce the universe?' It was my mind chasing the chain of causation of things and realizing that, whatever that chain looked like, I could never trace it all the way back to absolute nothing - so why this mysterious beingness? The fact is it's beyond reason. Call it a gift or a miracle and you're as close to it as anything. God is no answer, mind you - he's just another spurious bottom turtle. God, laws of quantum mechanics: it's just different attempts to stop the rot of infinite regress, hammer in a wedge somewhere and say "Because".  Why do the law of quantum physics exist? Because. Why does God, the UD, the Buddhist void exist? Because. 

It is different for the UD. Its existence is a theorem in any theory of everything, like this one:

classical logic +

0 ≠ s(x)

s(x) = s(y) -> x = y

x+0 = x

x+s(y) = s(x+y)

x*0=0

x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

or in this one:

Kxy = x

Sxyz = xz(yz)

As for the remark about nothingness having only one way of being and there being a lot more ways of existing, it's cute, but it's sophistry. Non-being is not a countable way of being.

I agree.

It's the absence of being - obviously - so can't be presented as one among a myriad of possible configurations of the universe.

It that exists. Exactly.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[meekerdb]

Or maybe it's global warming which might make the Earth uninhabitable. Of course in a sense that's an engineering success, not failure.

There have 2053 nuclear bombs exploded.  I'm not sure how many were above ground; about 200 U.S. and probably an equal number of Soviet.

Brent

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[Craig Weinberg]

On May 7, 3:44 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 5/7/2012 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On May 7, 1:25 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net>  wrote:
>
> >> The 'laws' of logic are just the rules of language that ensure we don't issue
> >> contradictory statements.
> > You have to have logic to begin with to conceive of the desirability
> > of avoiding contradiction. Something has to put the 'contra' into our
> > 'diction'.
>
> No, you only need to understand negation, to have a language with the word 'not'.  Then if
> someone says to you "X" and "not-X" you immediately realize the need to avoid
> contradiction, because a contradiction fails to express anything.

"You immediately realize" = logic. A baby doesn't immediately realize
that there is a need to avoid contradiction, even though they may
understand bottle and not-bottle. An insane person or just irrational
person may not care about avoiding contradiction even though they
understand negation. Any anticipation of an outcome which results in a
modification of one's intention is a form of logic. If I avoid
something for a reason, I am using logic.

>
>
>
> >   The 'laws' of quantum mechanics also follow from simple
> >> assumptions about the world having symmetries (c.f. Russell Standish's "Theory of Nothing"
> >> and Vic Stenger's "The Comprehensible Cosmos") and having a symmetry is a kind of
> >> 'nothing', i.e. having no distinguishing characteristic under some transformation.
> > Invariance is one aspect of symmetry,
>
> It's an essential aspect. A symmetry is a property that is invariant under some
> transformation.

All properties are invariant under some transformation, that's what
makes them a property. Symmetry is a very specific sense of combined
variance, invariance, but most of all a sense of conjugation by
opposition.

>
> > but you cannot reduce symmetry
> > to being a 'kind of nothing'. Symmetry cannot be anything less than a
> > feature of sense.
>
> I can if I explicitly say what kind it is - which I did.

Your reduction reduces symmetry to be no different from asymmetry.
Asymmetry is invariant under some transformation also. You have only
made the word symmetry meaningless.

Craig

[meekerdb]

On 5/7/2012 2:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> On May 7, 3:44 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> On 5/7/2012 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>> On May 7, 1:25 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> The 'laws' of logic are just the rules of language that ensure we don't issue
>>>> contradictory statements.
>>> You have to have logic to begin with to conceive of the desirability
>>> of avoiding contradiction. Something has to put the 'contra' into our
>>> 'diction'.
>> No, you only need to understand negation, to have a language with the word 'not'. Then if
>> someone says to you "X" and "not-X" you immediately realize the need to avoid
>> contradiction, because a contradiction fails to express anything.
> "You immediately realize" = logic. A baby doesn't immediately realize
> that there is a need to avoid contradiction, even though they may
> understand bottle and not-bottle.

They don't have language either. "Bottle and not-bottle" can only occur in language,
there is no fact corresponding to "bottle and not-bottle".

> An insane person or just irrational
> person may not care about avoiding contradiction even though they
> understand negation.

They may not care to make sense. But then why should we listen to them.

> Any anticipation of an outcome which results in a
> modification of one's intention is a form of logic. If I avoid
> something for a reason, I am using logic.

Yes, but not logic alone. You're using it to connect facts and values and actions that
you know about in other ways.

>
>>
>>
>>> The 'laws' of quantum mechanics also follow from simple
>>>> assumptions about the world having symmetries (c.f. Russell Standish's "Theory of Nothing"
>>>> and Vic Stenger's "The Comprehensible Cosmos") and having a symmetry is a kind of
>>>> 'nothing', i.e. having no distinguishing characteristic under some transformation.
>>> Invariance is one aspect of symmetry,
>> It's an essential aspect. A symmetry is a property that is invariant under some
>> transformation.
> All properties are invariant under some transformation, that's what
> makes them a property. Symmetry is a very specific sense of combined
> variance, invariance, but most of all a sense of conjugation by
> opposition.

You seem to think of symmetry a as single thing. Of course all properties are invariant
under the identity transformation. But some things are invariant under discrete
translations, some under continuous translation, some under reflection, some under
interchange,...

>
>>> but you cannot reduce symmetry
>>> to being a 'kind of nothing'. Symmetry cannot be anything less than a
>>> feature of sense.
>> I can if I explicitly say what kind it is - which I did.
> Your reduction reduces symmetry to be no different from asymmetry.
> Asymmetry is invariant under some transformation also. You have only
> made the word symmetry meaningless.

Symmetry isn't a thing and asymmetry isn't either.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

This is because since 1500 years rigor is simply not allowed in philosophy and theology. It is mainly political. In a part of academy it seems that results throwing doubt on the Aristotelian dogma are simply ignored. We are still prehistorical in theology, for reason of control, not for reason of reason. Enlightenment was half enlightenment. And it is grave: if an engineer is wrong, problems can be quickly fixed, but if you are wrong in the human sciences, problems can last for millennia.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[R AM]

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

As for the remark about nothingness having only one way of being and there being a lot more ways of existing, it's cute, but it's sophistry. Non-being is not a countable way of being.

I agree.

Hi Bruno, what do you agree with exactly? That non-being is not being is obvious but irrelevant. The real question here is whether nothing and the multiple "somethings" can be put in the same collection in a non-arbitrary way. And they can: the collection of elements created by removing "things" from one another. And "nothing" is one of these elements.

It's the absence of being - obviously - so can't be presented as one among a myriad of possible configurations of the universe.

I never claimed that "nothing" is a possible configuration of the universe. All I said is that there are more ways of being than of non-being, which is obviously true, in the same way that there is just one zero, but many positive integers.

Ricardo.

 

[Craig Weinberg]

On May 7, 5:22 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 5/7/2012 2:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > On May 7, 3:44 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net>  wrote:
> >> On 5/7/2012 12:04 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> >>> On May 7, 1:25 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net>    wrote:
> >>>> The 'laws' of logic are just the rules of language that ensure we don't issue
> >>>> contradictory statements.
> >>> You have to have logic to begin with to conceive of the desirability
> >>> of avoiding contradiction. Something has to put the 'contra' into our
> >>> 'diction'.
> >> No, you only need to understand negation, to have a language with the word 'not'.  Then if
> >> someone says to you "X" and "not-X" you immediately realize the need to avoid
> >> contradiction, because a contradiction fails to express anything.
> > "You immediately realize" = logic. A baby doesn't immediately realize
> > that there is a need to avoid contradiction, even though they may
> > understand bottle and not-bottle.
>
> They don't have language either.  "Bottle and not-bottle" can only occur in language,
> there is no fact corresponding to "bottle and not-bottle".

Huh? The fact of 'bottle' is the experience of seeing, holding, and
using the bottle. The experience of wanting or expecting the bottle
when it is no longer present is 'not-bottle'.

>
> > An insane person or just irrational
> > person may not care about avoiding contradiction even though they
> > understand negation.
>
> They may not care to make sense.  But then why should we listen to them.

I'm not saying that we should listen to them or whether or not they
care to make sense, I'm pointing out how you are taking sense and
logic completely for granted when you say "you immediately realize the

need to avoid contradiction, because a contradiction fails to express

anything"; when you claim that "The 'laws' of logic are just the rules

of language that ensure we don't issue contradictory statements."

>

> > Any anticipation of an outcome which results in a
> > modification of one's intention is a form of logic. If I avoid
> > something for a reason, I am using logic.
>
> Yes, but not logic alone.  You're using it to connect facts and values and actions that
> you know about in other ways.

Yes, those other ways are through perception, experience, and thought,
ie sense. They don't appear from language, language develops through
sense.

>
>
>
> >>>    The 'laws' of quantum mechanics also follow from simple
> >>>> assumptions about the world having symmetries (c.f. Russell Standish's "Theory of Nothing"
> >>>> and Vic Stenger's "The Comprehensible Cosmos") and having a symmetry is a kind of
> >>>> 'nothing', i.e. having no distinguishing characteristic under some transformation.
> >>> Invariance is one aspect of symmetry,
> >> It's an essential aspect. A symmetry is a property that is invariant under some
> >> transformation.
> > All properties are invariant under some transformation, that's what
> > makes them a property. Symmetry is a very specific sense of combined
> > variance, invariance, but most of all a sense of conjugation by
> > opposition.
>
> You seem to think of symmetry a as single thing.

In one sense it is, in other senses it isn't. Symmetry is just a word,
but it points to a subject, which always extends to other subjects.

> Of course all properties are invariant
> under the identity transformation.  But some things are invariant under discrete
> translations, some under continuous translation, some under reflection, some under
> interchange,...

I'm just talking about a common sense use of property and invariant.
By definition a property is a characteristic that persists. Invariance
is necessary but not sufficient to describe symmetry or asymmetry.

>
>
>
> >>> but you cannot reduce symmetry
> >>> to being a 'kind of nothing'. Symmetry cannot be anything less than a
> >>> feature of sense.
> >> I can if I explicitly say what kind it is - which I did.
> > Your reduction reduces symmetry to be no different from asymmetry.
> > Asymmetry is invariant under some transformation also. You have only
> > made the word symmetry meaningless.
>
> Symmetry isn't a thing and asymmetry isn't either.

It's not a thing in the sense of being an object, no, but it is a
qualitative property of pattern recognition.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2012, at 11:49, R AM wrote:

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

As for the remark about nothingness having only one way of being and there being a lot more ways of existing, it's cute, but it's sophistry. Non-being is not a countable way of being.

I agree.

Hi Bruno, what do you agree with exactly? That non-being is not being is obvious but irrelevant. The real question here is whether nothing and the multiple "somethings" can be put in the same collection in a non-arbitrary way. And they can: the collection of elements created by removing "things" from one another. And "nothing" is one of these elements.

Why? If you remove all elements of a set, it remains an empty set. If you remove all sets of a universe of sets, it remains an empty collection, which in this case is also a set.

It's the absence of being - obviously - so can't be presented as one among a myriad of possible configurations of the universe.

I never claimed that "nothing" is a possible configuration of the universe. All I said is that there are more ways of being than of non-being, which is obviously true, in the same way that there is just one zero, but many positive integers.

This confirms that when we use the term nothing, it will make sense only if we are already agreeing working in some theory of the things we are talking about. Numbers => 0. Set theory => empty set, QM => Q vacuum, etc.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Stephen P. King]

On 5/7/2012 9:16 AM, R AM wrote:

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net> wrote:

Hi Stephen,

 

- If nothing has no properties, and a limitation is considered a property, then "nothing" cannot have any limitations, including the limitation of generating "something". Therefore, "something" may come from "nothing".

    Can nothing be treated as an object itself? Can we "hang" properties on it?

Some people claim that something cannot come from "nothing". I think they are hanging a property on it.

Hi Ricardo,

    Yes and some other people claim that something can indeed come out of nothing - so long as that something comes with its antithesis so that the sum of the two is equal to nothing, kinda like 1 and -1 popping out of zero. I think that they are "hanging a property on it" and thus they are assuming that it has "hooks" - to follow the metaphor. But I think that here we are looking at the symptoms of something else, the symptoms of the word "come from" or "caused by" or "emergent". They all involve some kind of transformation. Are transformations possible within a "nothing"? What about automorphisms? Those transformations that leave some pattern or object unchanged?

 

Are we actually talking about "substance" as synonomous with what the philosophers of old used to use as the object minus its properties? I like to use the word "Existence" in this case, as it would seen to naturally include "nothing" and "something" as its most trivial dual categories.

- Given that something exists, it is possible that something exists (obviously). The later would be true even if "nothing" was the case. Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing with the possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.

    Does Nothingness exist? Can Nothingness non-exist? At what point are we playing games with words and at what point are we being meaningful?

I think a proper philosopher would say that "nothing" is the state of affairs (rather than "nothing" exists).

    Umm, OK, but would this not make "affairs" more primitive than nothing?  I think that this way of thinking starts of with a collection of "somethings" (plural) and classifies "nothing" as that particular member of the collection that is the place holder for the absence of a state. This is the patterns that we see in the Natural numbers, where ZERO (0) marks the spot that divides the positive numbers from the negative numbers.

 

You are pointing out how "possibility" seems to be implicitly tied to the relation between something and nothing. In my reasoning this is why I consider existence as "necessary possibility". Unfortunately, this consideration suffers from the ambiguity inherent in semiotics known as the figure-frame relation. Is the word we use to denote or connote a referent? What if we mean to use both denotative and connotative uses?

One way of intuiting "nothing" is that which remains when you have removed everything.

    Right.

In fact, I believe that the philosophical "nothing" is nothing else than classical empty space elevated to metaphysical heights.

    I agree. We see this in the modern notion of the vacuum or vacua (plural).

The problem is that even after you have removed everything (including time and space), there is something that cannot be removed: the possibility of something existing.

    Exactly! Possibility itself can never be completely extracted, it can only be countered.

It would seem that "nothing" (or rather, NOTHING) shouldn't allow even for the logical possibility of something existing. But given that something exists, this possibility cannot be removed. That is why I said that the idea of "nothing" and the logical possibility of existence, sharing the same state of affairs, is bizarre (if not incompatible).

    I agree. This is what I have in mind as well.

 

- Why should "nothing" be the default state? I think this is based on the intuition that "nothing" would require no explanation, whereas "something" requires an explanation. However, given that the possibility of something existing is necessarily true, an explanation would be required for why there is "nothing" instead of "something".

    I agree. We might even think or intuit "nothing" as the absolute absence of 'everything' : the sum of all particulars that piece-wise and collection-wise are not-nothing; whereas 'something' is a special case of 'everything'; a particular case of everything.

Probably the best way of defining "nothing" is the absence of everything (not this, not that, ...). But isn't it funny that in order to define "nothing" you have to accept the possibility of everything?

    And I think that is a very important point! This is part of my argument that Existence is necessary possibility itself.

- There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)

    But this statement implicitly assumes a measure that itself, then, implies a common basis for comparison. Is there a set, class, category or other 'collection' that has all of the forms, modalities, aspects, etc. of something along with nothing?

I guess it couldn't be a set.

    Right, because a set requires the definition of a function that picks out its members, either by inclusion or exclusion. One cannot just have a set and nothing else.

In any case, when people ask the question "why something rather than nothing", they implicitely assume that there is some sort of priority for "nothing" over something.

My short answer to "why something rather than nothing?" is "why not?".

    Yeah, but while that is clever it does not explain much, but I appreciate the spirit of the answer.

 

 We tend not to think much of it, but 'Nothing' = Sum of {not a cat, not a dot, not a fist, not a person, not a word, ... }

I agree, but why the absence of things requires less explanation than the presence of things?

    I think that it requires less of an explicit explanation as it relies on the explanations that exist previously in the minds of those that are apprehending the explanation. The fact that explanations are what conscious entities do with each other, they communicate meanings, not by pushing some "stuff" into them, but by implicating patterns of relations between the elements of the minds of the entities. Knowledge, learning, perception, Understanding are more like synchronization and entrainment than anything else.

 

    I suspect that the answer to this question is trivial: We see this universe because it is the only one that is minimally (?) consistent with our ability to both observe it and communicate with each other about it.

OK, now prove the mass of the electron from these axioms :-)

    Well, we would first have to be sure that we had the necessary elements to define what the relations of mass and electron are...

[John Mikes]

John:

who told you that "anything" evolved? especially: from nothing? that is our human stupidity presuming a world according to our figments. We "think" in our terms, i.e. if something seems to be, it had to 'evolve'. (I almost wrote: 'be created'!) 

We 'think' there is something. Do we have the capacity of going back further than we can? Certainly not, - YET - we draw conclusions fitting into our today's liking about such. 

 

Thanks for your remarks on my - now obsolete - memory. 

 

John Mikes  

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 12:24 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, May 5, 2012  John Mikes <jam...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Is it so hard to understand a "word"?

Yes, the word "nothing" keeps evolving. Until about a hundred years ago "nothing" just meant a vacuum, space empty of any matter; then a few years later the meaning was expanded to include lacking any energy too, then still later it meant also not having space, and then it meant not even having time. Something that is lacking matter energy time and space may not be the purest form of nothing but it is, you must admit, a pretty pitiful "thing", and if science can explain (and someday it very well may be able to) how our world with all it's beautiful complexity came to be from such modest beginnings then that would not be a bad days work, and to call such activities "incredibly shallow" as some on this list have is just idiotic.        
 

> N O T H I N G  -  is not a set of anything, no potential

Then the question "can something come from nothing?" has a obvious and extremely dull answer.

> I wrote once a little silly 'ode' about ontology. I started:

     "In the beginning there was Nothingness.

     And when Nothingness realised it's nothingness

     It turned into Somethingness

Then your version of nothing had something, the potential to produce something. I also note the use of the word "when", thus time, which is something, existed in your "nothing" universe as well as potential.

  John K Clark

[John Mikes]

Ricardo:

good text! I may add to it:

"Who created Nothing? - of course: Nobody". (The ancient joke of Odysseus towards Polyphemos: 'Nobody' has hurt me).  

 

Just one thing: if it contains (includes) EMPTY SPACE, it includes space, it is not nothing. And please, do not forget about my adage in the previous post that limits (borders) are similarly not includable into nothing, so it must be an infinite - well - "nothing".

It still may contain things we have no knowledge about and in such case it is NOT nothing. We just are ignorant. 

 

JM 

 

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 1:06 PM, R AM <ramr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Some thoughts about "nothing":

- If nothing has no properties, and a limitation is considered a property, then "nothing" cannot have any limitations, including the limitation of generating "something". Therefore, "something" may come from "nothing". 

- Given that something exists, it is possible that something exists (obviously). The later would be true even if "nothing" was the case. Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing with the possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.

- Why should "nothing" be the default state? I think this is based on the intuition that "nothing" would require no explanation, whereas "something" requires an explanation. However, given that the possibility of something existing is necessarily true, an explanation would be required for why there is "nothing" instead of "something".

- There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)

- I think the intuition that "nothing" requires less explanation than the universe we observe is based on a generalization of the idea of classical empty space. However, this intuition is based on what we know about *this* universe (i.e. empty space is simpler than things existing in it). But why this intuition about *our* reality should be extrapolated to metaphysics?

- I think that the important question is why this universe instead of any other universe? (including "nothing").

Ricardo.

[meekerdb]

On 5/8/2012 12:46 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Ricardo:

good text! I may add to it:

"Who created Nothing? - of course: Nobody". (The ancient joke of Odysseus towards Polyphemos: 'Nobody' has hurt me).  

 

Just one thing: if it contains (includes) EMPTY SPACE, it includes space, it is not nothing. And please, do not forget about my adage in the previous post that limits (borders) are similarly not includable into nothing, so it must be an infinite - well - "nothing".

It still may contain things we have no knowledge about and in such case it is NOT nothing. We just are ignorant. 

If we're ignorant, what do we know about?  Nothing.  :-)

Brent
"What is there?  Everything! So what isn't there?  Nothing!"
         --- Norm Levitt, after Quine

[R AM]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 6:37 PM, Stephen P. King <step...@charter.net> wrote:

Some people claim that something cannot come from "nothing". I think they are hanging a property on it.

Hi Ricardo,

    Yes and some other people claim that something can indeed come out of nothing - so long as that something comes with its antithesis so that the sum of the two is equal to nothing, kinda like 1 and -1 popping out of zero. I think that they are "hanging a property on it" and thus they are assuming that it has "hooks" - to follow the metaphor. But I think that here we are looking at the symptoms of something else, the symptoms of the word "come from" or "caused by" or "emergent". They all involve some kind of transformation. Are transformations possible within a "nothing"? What about automorphisms? Those transformations that leave some pattern or object unchanged?

I agree that it is weird to say that something comes out of nothing, as it implies some sort of time, which is not present in "nothing". I don't know what to answer you but here is another argument (sort of):

- Let's start with a classical universe (Newtonian, with matter in it). 

- Let's remove the matter

What is left is empty classical space. Can something come out of empty classical space? Of course not. I think that almost always, when people say "nothing" they actually mean classical empty space.

- Now let's remove the empty space. What is left is "nothing". Can something come out of this "nothing"? Well, I think it could. At least, I would say it cannot be discarded, or even, that anything is possible. Our intuitions about classical empty space shouldn't be imposed on "nothing". For some reason, people believe that classical empty space and "nothing" are sort of similar. But, why should they be, at all?

 

I think a proper philosopher would say that "nothing" is the state of affairs (rather than "nothing" exists).

    Umm, OK, but would this not make "affairs" more primitive than nothing? 

I think proper philosophers say "state of affairs" when they would like to use "state" but know they shouldn't :-). OK, just kidding.

 

I think that this way of thinking starts of with a collection of "somethings" (plural) and classifies "nothing" as that particular member of the collection that is the place holder for the absence of a state. This is the patterns that we see in the Natural numbers, where ZERO (0) marks the spot that divides the positive numbers from the negative numbers.

I think so. 

 

In any case, when people ask the question "why something rather than nothing", they implicitely assume that there is some sort of priority for "nothing" over something.

My short answer to "why something rather than nothing?" is "why not?".

    Yeah, but while that is clever it does not explain much, but I appreciate the spirit of the answer.

I agree, but it forces people to think about why they believe that "nothing" should be preferably the case, rather than something. 

Although we all have had this surprise/revelation "hey, things actually exist, how come!", it's sort of funny. I mean, we are born with stuff around us, and this is the case until we die. Our experience in the world is that of transformation, never of things becoming nothing. Science only confirms this: existence is hard. It's impossible to make matter/energy disappear. I mean, really disappear. We wouldn't be able to obtain "nothing" even if we really really wanted to (not even a Big Crunch). And yet, we find it difficult to believe that there is something rather than nothing. Go figure :-). I think it would be interesting to ascertain why our psychology sends us this way.

 We tend not to think much of it, but 'Nothing' = Sum of {not a cat, not a dot, not a fist, not a person, not a word, ... }

I agree, but why the absence of things requires less explanation than the presence of things?

    I think that it requires less of an explicit explanation as it relies on the explanations that exist previously in the minds of those that are apprehending the explanation. The fact that explanations are what conscious entities do with each other, they communicate meanings, not by pushing some "stuff" into them, but by implicating patterns of relations between the elements of the minds of the entities. Knowledge, learning, perception, Understanding are more like synchronization and entrainment than anything else.

I understand what you mean by explanation, but not why "nothing" being the case would require less explanation than something being the case ...

Ricardo.

[R AM]

On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 7:43 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, May 6, 2012  <ramr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)

EXCELLENT!  I wish I'd said that; Picasso said good artists borrow but great artists steal, so no doubt some day I will indeed say that.

I just found out that this argument had been proposed by Van Inwagen in 1996. I must have read it somewhere and stuck into my mind. Hapens all the time :-)

Van Inwagen, Peter (1996) “Why Is There Anything at All?”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 70: 95-110.

 

Ricardo.

[R AM]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 9:46 PM, John Mikes <jam...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ricardo:

good text! I may add to it:

"Who created Nothing? - of course: Nobody". (The ancient joke of Odysseus towards Polyphemos: 'Nobody' has hurt me).  

 

Just one thing: if it contains (includes) EMPTY SPACE, it includes space, it is not nothing.

I actually meant that most of the time, people say "nothing" when they mean Newtonian empty space. I agree that "nothing" is not empty space.

 

And please, do not forget about my adage in the previous post that limits (borders) are similarly not includable into nothing, so it must be an infinite - well - "nothing".

It still may contain things we have no knowledge about and in such case it is NOT nothing. We just are ignorant. 

I agree that if it contains things, then it is not "nothing", but you can "create" a "nothing" by removing them.

Ricardo. 

[Pierz]

>There is an interesting point here, although probably not what you intended. What you say is true, you cannot trace it all the way back to absolute nothing, >because there is no reverse physical process that transforms something into "nothing" (at least, not into absolute nothing). Or equivalently, there is no physical >process that transforms "absolute nothing" into something. But if that is the case, why are you so sure that "nothing" must have come before?

You must have misread me. I am anything but sure nothing must have come before. Indeed, my whole point is that something from nothing - genuine nothing - is a nonsense. You can't bridge the hgap between existence and non existence by any causal process. I think that's obvious, and we must accept that the universe simply 'is'.

>>As for the remark about nothingness having only one way of being and there being a lot more ways of existing, it's cute, but it's sophistry. Non-being is not a >>countable way of being. It's the absence of being - obviously - so can't be presented as one among a myriad of possible configurations of the universe.

>I agree "nothing" is not a configuration of things, but I think it could be considered as one element belonging to an abstract space. Let's consider this universe and >the abstract operation of removing things. We can remove the Sun, Andromeda, etc. "Nothing" is what is left after removing all things (including space, time, ...). >It's one among many. It's not that different from 0 being a natural number or the empty set being a set.
 

An empty set is not the absence of a set. But to take another angle on it: consider what you mean by removing these objects. It's merely something you're imagining, it does not correspond to any real process. In reality, energy and matter transform, they are not created or destroyed. You can't simply imagine subtracting one universe from the universe and getting nothing then say, "See, I can get nothing from a universe by subtracting it from itself, so I can get a universe from nothing by adding it back in"! You're just creating some imagined bridge between non-existence and existence when that is in fact the whole point of the dilemma. You say existence is more "likely" than nonexistence based on this imaginary subtraction/addition, but think about the meaning of "likely". What is the set you're sampling from? All possible states of existence including the absence of anything - the empty set. So you've already 'created' the universe of universes as it were. Why is there a set to sample from to allow there to be any likelihood of one or the other state of being? That is the crux of the issue.

>Ricardo.

[Pierz]

The problem is that physicists have not yet succeed in marrying QM and GR, which is needed to get a quantum theory of space-time. You can bet on strings or on loop gravity though, or on the Dewitt-Wheeler equation, which, actually make physical time vanishing completely from the big picture. It is an internal parameter only.

Yes, none of which I pretend to understand any more than any guy who reads all the popular expositions of such theories. But it seems highly dubious to me for Krauss to even present a theory that pretends to explain something as fundamental as something from nothing given the absence of a QM-GR unification. After all, as good as QM and GR are at predicting stuff in their domains, we know that neither is right! It's an overreach.

It is different for the UD. Its existence is a theorem in any theory of everything, like this one:

classical logic +
0 ≠ s(x)
s(x) = s(y) -> x = y
x+0 = x
x+s(y) = s(x+y)
x*0=0
x*s(y)=(x*y)+x

or in this one:

Kxy = x
Sxyz = xz(yz)

Yeah OK fine, so maybe I'm one turtle too high! Let's just say arithemetic then. Why does it exist? Because.

[Craig Weinberg]

On May 8, 8:36 pm, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah OK fine, so maybe I'm one turtle too high! Let's just say arithemetic then. Why does it exist? Because.

Try it this way instead: Why does existence have causality? To make
more sense.

Craig

[Bruno Marchal]

On 08 May 2012, at 21:46, John Mikes wrote:

Ricardo:

good text! I may add to it:

"Who created Nothing? - of course: Nobody". (The ancient joke of Odysseus towards Polyphemos: 'Nobody' has hurt me).  

 

Just one thing: if it contains (includes) EMPTY SPACE, it includes space, it is not nothing. And please, do not forget about my adage in the previous post that limits (borders) are similarly not includable into nothing, so it must be an infinite - well - "nothing".

It still may contain things we have no knowledge about and in such case it is NOT nothing. We just are ignorant. 

Also, I can make a critic to 'nothing' or 'everything' similar to my critics of how Stephen use the term "existence". It is a word, and it can belong to a theory only if there is an axiomatic for it, or a semi-axiomatic. You have to be able to give some sense of some "thing" to define or point on "no-thing". At the metalevel, nothing and everything are coextensive.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2012, at 02:25, Pierz wrote:

>
>
>> There is an interesting point here, although probably not what you
>> intended. What you say is true, you cannot trace it all the way
>> back to absolute nothing, >because there is no reverse physical
>> process that transforms something into "nothing" (at least, not
>> into absolute nothing). Or equivalently, there is no physical
>> >process that transforms "absolute nothing" into something. But if
>> that is the case, why are you so sure that "nothing" must have come
>> before?
>
> You must have misread me. I am anything but sure nothing must have
> come before. Indeed, my whole point is that something from nothing -
> genuine nothing - is a nonsense. You can't bridge the hgap between
> existence and non existence by any causal process. I think that's
> obvious, and we must accept that the universe simply 'is'.

We must accept that we have to assume something exist. Not necessarily
a (physical) universe. With comp there is no physical universe, but we
can explain why we believe in it from numbers. But we have to assume
numbers, which are not "nothing".
In all case, we need to assume some basic theory, and it starts from
some basic bet on a reality.

There are different way to generate every sets from the empty set,
like taking its unary intersection in classical logic, or by using the
reflexion schema. In all case, the nothing is in the mind of some
"observer' or 'thinker'. Oh, surely God can create some thing from
nothing, but then you need a God, which can hardly be 'nothing', in
that case.

Bruno



>
>> Ricardo.

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[Bruno Marchal]

In this case, we can explain and prove that we cannot explain them
from less. You provably need some understanding of the numbers to get
them. Some people thought we can explain or derive natural numbers
from logic, but this has failed, and eventually we can use logic to
explain that no theory which does not assume the numbers (or something
equivalent) can derive the numbers.

To be sure, you can derive the numlbers from Kxy = x and Sxyz =
xz(yz), like you can derive the axiom of arithmetic (0≠s(x), ...)
from Kxy = x and Sxyz = xz(yz). They are equivalent (at some
ontological level).

This makes arithmetic (or Turing equivalent) a nice starting place. In
that case you can derive at least all dreams, and without them, you
can derive none of them.

So in that case, you are provably right. Why does number exists?
because ... if they don't exist you would not been able to ask that
question. And why do you ask?
Numbers are truly mysterious. Provably mysterious.

This is not entirely obvious. At first sight, it looks like numbers
are logical, but that intuition is false.

Bruno

PS. You might try to make better quotes.

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[R AM]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 2:25 AM, Pierz <pie...@gmail.com> wrote:

You must have misread me. I am anything but sure nothing must have come before.

Yes, probably I did.

 

Indeed, my whole point is that something from nothing - genuine nothing - is a nonsense. You can't bridge the hgap between existence and non existence by any causal process. I think that's obvious, and we must accept that the universe simply 'is'.

I agree. 

  

An empty set is not the absence of a set.

A set is a collection of elements and the empty set is the absence of elements (nothing).

 

But to take another angle on it: consider what you mean by removing these objects. It's merely something you're imagining, it does not correspond to any real process. In reality, energy and matter transform, they are not created or destroyed.

I agree, it is not a physical process. But I am not proposing this combinatorics as a way to create something from nothing, but just to show that there are more ways of being than of non-being. In fact, it is not that different of saying that the laws of this universe are "unlikely" (given that many more are possible). But it is all combinatorics.

 

You say existence is more "likely" than nonexistence based on this imaginary subtraction/addition, but think about the meaning of "likely". What is the set you're sampling from? All possible states of existence including the absence of anything - the empty set. So you've already 'created' the universe of universes as it were. Why is there a set to sample from to allow there to be any likelihood of one or the other state of being? That is the crux of the issue.

Well, I have not really "created" this set of possibilities, have I? The possibilities are out there, so to speak. I cannot even imagine how to make them go away, so to speak. I mean, I can imagine my home does not exist, but I cannot imagine the absence of the possibility of my home.

OK, let's try another angle. People in this list have infinite universes for breakfast. To me, the most important problem of multiverses is that most universes in them are random (white rabbits). But it is not usually appreciated that very vew of them correspond to Newtonian empty space. In fact, the multiverse already explains why there is something rather than empty space (at the cost of white rabbits). I agree that Newtonian empty space is not nothing, but the argument that I have used is very similar, and classic empty space is what most people mean by "nothing" anyway.

Ricardo.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2012, at 12:36, R AM wrote:

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 2:25 AM, Pierz <pie...@gmail.com> wrote:

You must have misread me. I am anything but sure nothing must have come before.

Yes, probably I did.

 

Indeed, my whole point is that something from nothing - genuine nothing - is a nonsense. You can't bridge the hgap between existence and non existence by any causal process. I think that's obvious, and we must accept that the universe simply 'is'.

I agree. 

  

An empty set is not the absence of a set.

A set is a collection of elements and the empty set is the absence of elements (nothing).

The empty set is the absence of elements (nothing) in that set. It is the set { }.

The empty set is not nothing. For example, the set is { { } } is not empty. It contains as element the empty set.

Just to be precise.

 

But to take another angle on it: consider what you mean by removing these objects. It's merely something you're imagining, it does not correspond to any real process. In reality, energy and matter transform, they are not created or destroyed.

I agree, it is not a physical process. But I am not proposing this combinatorics as a way to create something from nothing, but just to show that there are more ways of being than of non-being. In fact, it is not that different of saying that the laws of this universe are "unlikely" (given that many more are possible). But it is all combinatorics.

 

You say existence is more "likely" than nonexistence based on this imaginary subtraction/addition, but think about the meaning of "likely". What is the set you're sampling from? All possible states of existence including the absence of anything - the empty set. So you've already 'created' the universe of universes as it were. Why is there a set to sample from to allow there to be any likelihood of one or the other state of being? That is the crux of the issue.

Well, I have not really "created" this set of possibilities, have I? The possibilities are out there, so to speak. I cannot even imagine how to make them go away, so to speak. I mean, I can imagine my home does not exist, but I cannot imagine the absence of the possibility of my home.

OK, let's try another angle. People in this list have infinite universes for breakfast. To me, the most important problem of multiverses is that most universes in them are random (white rabbits). But it is not usually appreciated that very vew of them correspond to Newtonian empty space. In fact, the multiverse already explains why there is something rather than empty space (at the cost of white rabbits). I agree that Newtonian empty space is not nothing, but the argument that I have used is very similar, and classic empty space is what most people mean by "nothing" anyway.

Ricardo.

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[R AM]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 12:48 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

The empty set is the absence of elements (nothing) in that set. It is the set { }.

The empty set is not nothing. For example, the set is { { } } is not empty. It contains as element the empty set.

Just to be precise.

Well, I guess that the empty set is more like an empty box.

Ricardo.

[Bruno Marchal]

Yes.

"Nothing", in set theory, would be more like an empty *collection* of sets, or an empty "universe" (a model of set theory), except that in first order logic we forbid empty models (so that AxP(x) -> ExP(x) remains valid, to simplify life (proofs)).

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[R AM]

PM, Bruno Marchal 

Yes.

"Nothing", in set theory, would be more like an empty *collection* of sets, or an empty "universe" (a model of set theory), except that in first order logic we forbid empty models (so that AxP(x) -> ExP(x) remains valid, to simplify life (proofs)).

"nothing" could also be obtained by removing the curly brackets from the empty set {}. Or removing the (empty) container. I guess this would be equivalent to "removing" space from the universe. Except that this doesn't make any sense in Set Theory (maybe it doesn't make any sense in reality either).

Still, {} is some sort of nothing in Set Theory, given that it is what is left after all that is allowed to be removed, is removed.

Ricardo.

 

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2012, at 17:09, R AM wrote:

PM, Bruno Marchal 

Yes.

"Nothing", in set theory, would be more like an empty *collection* of sets, or an empty "universe" (a model of set theory), except that in first order logic we forbid empty models (so that AxP(x) -> ExP(x) remains valid, to simplify life (proofs)).

"nothing" could also be obtained by removing the curly brackets from the empty set {}.

Noooo... Some bit of blank remains. If it was written on hemp, you could smoke it. That's not nothing!

Don't confuse the notion and the symbols used to point to the notion. Which you did, inadvertently I guess.

{ } is a set and "{ }" is a string with 3 symbols, ... which should be differentiated even from the paper and ink, or stable picture on a screen, representing physically the symbols to you, and then from the image made by your brain, and the neuronal 'music' trigged by it, and the consciousness filtered locally by the process, etc.

Or removing the (empty) container. I guess this would be equivalent to "removing" space from the universe. Except that this doesn't make any sense in Set Theory (maybe it doesn't make any sense in reality either).

Still, {} is some sort of nothing in Set Theory,

Sure, like 0 is some sort of nothing in Number theory, and like quantum vacuum is some sort of nothing in QM. Nothing is a theory dependent notion. (Not so for the notion of computable functions).

Extensionally, the UD is a function from nothing (no inputs) to nothing (no outputs), but then what a worker! 

Extensionally it belongs to { } ^ { }. It is a function from { } to { }. 

But that is a bit trivial, I think. It is due to the fact that computability theory is not dimensional. Dimensions also have to be derived from the internal points of view (with comp), like the real and complex numbers and the physical laws.

given that it is what is left after all that is allowed to be removed, is removed.

OK.

Bruno

Ricardo.

 

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[John Mikes]

Ricardo: I hate to become a nothingologist, but if you REMOVE things to make NOTHING you still have the remnanat (empty space, hole, potential of 'it' having been there or whatever) from WHERE you removed it. IMO in Nothing there is not even a "where" identified.

Forgive me the 'light' reply, please.

John M

[R AM]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:23 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 09 May 2012, at 17:09, R AM wrote:

"nothing" could also be obtained by removing the curly brackets from the empty set {}.

Noooo... Some bit of blank remains. If it was written on hemp, you could smoke it. That's not nothing!

Don't confuse the notion and the symbols used to point to the notion. Which you did, inadvertently I guess.

I was using the analogy between items contained in sets and things contained in bags. The curly brackets would represent the bags. Removing things from a bag leaves it empty. Removing the bag leaves ... nothing.

Sure, like 0 is some sort of nothing in Number theory, and like quantum vacuum is some sort of nothing in QM. Nothing is a theory dependent notion. (Not so for the notion of computable functions).

Yes, these concrete nothings are well behaved, unlike the absolute nothing, which we don't know what rules it obey (in case it is a meaningful concept, which it might not be). 

 

Extensionally, the UD is a function from nothing (no inputs) to nothing (no outputs), but then what a worker! 

Extensionally it belongs to { } ^ { }. It is a function from { } to { }. 

But I guess that is because the UD generates internally all possible inputs for all possible programs, isn't it.

 

Ricardo.

[R AM]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 9:26 PM, John Mikes <jam...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ricardo: I hate to become a nothingologist, but if you REMOVE things to make NOTHING you still have the remnanat (empty space, hole, potential of 'it' having been there or whatever) from WHERE you removed it. IMO in Nothing there is not even a "where" identified.

But the space gets removed too ... I'm not sure if I understand you.

Ricardo.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 09 May 2012, at 21:39, R AM wrote:

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:23 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 09 May 2012, at 17:09, R AM wrote:

"nothing" could also be obtained by removing the curly brackets from the empty set {}.

Noooo... Some bit of blank remains. If it was written on hemp, you could smoke it. That's not nothing!

Don't confuse the notion and the symbols used to point to the notion. Which you did, inadvertently I guess.

I was using the analogy between items contained in sets and things contained in bags. The curly brackets would represent the bags. Removing things from a bag leaves it empty. Removing the bag leaves ... nothing.

Nothing in the universe of sets. But this makes not much sense. And you have still an empty universe. Then you will tell me to remove all universes, but you will still get an empty multiverse. Oh, you can get rid of all multiverses, but you will still have an empty multi-multiverse. Oh, you can reiterate this in the transfinite, ... but you need some rich theory at the metalevel, then. Absolute nothingness does not make sense in my opinion.

Sure, like 0 is some sort of nothing in Number theory, and like quantum vacuum is some sort of nothing in QM. Nothing is a theory dependent notion. (Not so for the notion of computable functions).

Yes, these concrete nothings are well behaved, unlike the absolute nothing, which we don't know what rules it obey (in case it is a meaningful concept, which it might not be). 

OK.

 

Extensionally, the UD is a function from nothing (no inputs) to nothing (no outputs), but then what a worker! 

Extensionally it belongs to { } ^ { }. It is a function from { } to { }. 

But I guess that is because the UD generates internally all possible inputs for all possible programs, isn't it.

Right.

Bruno

 

Ricardo.

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[John Mikes]

Bruno and Ricardo:

 ...unless you remove the "boundries" as well - I think.

That would end up for "nothing" with a POINT, which is still a point and not nothing. (If you eliminate the point???)
John M

[Bruno Marchal]

On 10 May 2012, at 21:09, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno and Ricardo:

 ...unless you remove the "boundries" as well - I think.

That would end up for "nothing" with a POINT, which is still a point and not nothing. (If you eliminate the point???)
John M

I think we agree John. Pure nothingness makes no sense. Pure non-consciousness makes no sense either.

And besides, with the comp assumption, we have to assume the numbers and addition and multiplication, if not, words like "digital" have no meaning.

Bruno 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[John Mikes]

Pure non-consciousness?

that would approach the 'pure(?) nothingness'  - even in my generalized definition of Ccness:

"response to relations" leaving open he definition of a response and of relations. Otherwise it is perfect.

RESPONSE came in as a concoction from "acknowledgement of and response to" since you cannot respond without acknowledging to WHAT you reflect.

RELATION came in from the visualized (infinite) complexity of which we also are part and lots of so far unknown eements are included that MAY influence our 'world' (the model). All 'information' (hard to specify!) ends up in relations as it 'refers' to complexity-aspects.

Sorry for using so many unfamiliar words.

John M

[Bruno Marchal]

On 12 May 2012, at 22:51, John Mikes wrote:

Pure non-consciousness?

that would approach the 'pure(?) nothingness'  - even in my generalized definition of Ccness:

"response to relations" leaving open he definition of a response and of relations. Otherwise it is perfect.

But 'response to relations' miss the qualia aspect of consciousness.

RESPONSE came in as a concoction from "acknowledgement of and response to" since you cannot respond without acknowledging to WHAT you reflect.

RELATION came in from the visualized (infinite) complexity of which we also are part and lots of so far unknown eements are included that MAY influence our 'world' (the model). All 'information' (hard to specify!) ends up in relations as it 'refers' to complexity-aspects.

That is a bit unclear for me.

Sorry for using so many unfamiliar words.

That might explain why.

Bruno M

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[John Mikes]

Qualia aspect?

Please consider my 'rigid' agnostic stance with all those unknowable aspects playing into - what you so succinctly call: 'qualia' - I struggled for a long time to boil down my MOST GENERALIZED definition for something that would cover what many of us (?) call consciousness.

I don't want to put a partial group of qualia on the banner.

Besides: I fell into my own concept of 'networks of Networks (Karl Jaspers Forum TA62MIK) according to which there is no limitation how far connections may go.

So whatever I would name 'qualia' is by Occam's razor.

Not as a term of the infinite complexity I have in mind.

JM

[meekerdb]

On 5/14/2012 1:58 PM, John Mikes wrote:

Qualia aspect?

Please consider my 'rigid' agnostic stance with all those unknowable aspects playing into - what you so succinctly call: 'qualia' - I struggled for a long time to boil down my MOST GENERALIZED definition for something that would cover what many of us (?) call consciousness.

I don't want to put a partial group of qualia on the banner.

Besides: I fell into my own concept of 'networks of Networks (Karl Jaspers Forum TA62MIK) according to which there is no limitation how far connections may go.

So whatever I would name 'qualia' is by Occam's razor.

Not as a term of the infinite complexity I have in mind.

JM

No offense intended, but I strongly doubt that you can be conscious of infinite complexity.  ISTM that what one is conscious of is almost coextensive with what you can put into symbols: language, music, gestures, pictures.  Experiments with language and music suggest that you can only process about 50bits/sec.

Brent

[John Mikes]

Brent:

did I say . 

"I am conscious of infinite complexity???"  
If so, I used the word in a different meaning: like I know about. Or better: I think I know about. (Belief system).

I explained several times that said infinite comp[lex system is beyond our knowability although we are part of it with a partial knowledge. I never promised symbols (or even a rose garden).

 

--

[ronaldheld]

arXiv:1205.2720 [pdf]
Title: Why there is something rather than nothing: The finite,
infinite and eternal
Authors: Peter Lynds


Ronald

On May 15, 5:33 pm, John Mikes <jami...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Brent:
> did I say .

> "I am *conscious of infinite complexity???"
> *If so, I used the word in a different meaning: like I know about. Or

> >http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Stephen P. King]

On 5/17/2012 8:42 AM, ronaldheld wrote:
> arXiv:1205.2720 [pdf]
> Title: Why there is something rather than nothing: The finite,
> infinite and eternal
> Authors: Peter Lynds

Hi Ronald,

Thank you for posting this reference. After reading the paper I
find that I agree with it 100% but would point out that it assumes some
concepts that need more careful examination.

The idea of a "universe" is used as if where an object that has a
set of properties and relations that is completely independent of the
observations there of. This is not unusual, it is the common way of
thinking of things, but is it faithful to how Reality is?
I would argue that a "universe" is an object that is perceived by
some observer and that if no observer can be defined that has some
universe X as its observables, then such a universe X cannot exit. It is
not possible to have a universe where the observer thereof is somehow
"outside" of it. All observers will find themselves "in" a universe
consistent with their continuation as such observers. All other
alternatives generate logical contradictions.

I am going way out and claiming that there is no such thing as an
observer independent universe and that if we wish to consider conceptual
questions like "why is there something rather than nothing" that we need
to be mindful of the fact that all of the discussion, including the
concepts themselves, only exist in the minds of observers.

--
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon

[Colin Geoffrey Hales]

Why didn't you just ask me in the first place? It's easy.

"Nothing" (noun) is intrinsically unstable. Think about it. It takes an infinity of energy to maintain a perfect Nothing. So Nothing breaks up into its components.

There. You can all rest easy now.

Cheers
Colin

[John Mikes]

Colin,

you always have something extraordinary and unexpectable to say. Like: "infinity of energy" what can be easily zero as well, of something (- currently unidentified.)

It still leaves open my quale: 'nothing must not have borders either, (that would be a NO-nothing) so as far as our (incomplete) views are concerned: it is either infinite, or NOTHING indeed (even a point has ordinates).

And what would you 'maintain'? nothing? (see Odysseus and Polyphemus).

JohnM