
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? A Logical Investigation [pdf] - lainon
https://philpapers.org/archive/HEYWIT.pdf
======
dmfdmf
> The meta-question, viz. ‘Should we not stop asking the Question’, is
> accordingly tentatively answered affirmatively.

Well at least the author got the correct answer but unfortunately via an
entirely confusing and unnecessarily complex (and incomprehensible) method. It
is much simpler and more direct to see that it is an invalid question.

It is invalid because "nothing" is a relative term regarding something that
was or could have been present but now is gone. E.g., there is nothing in my
pocket. Nothing is not a thing it is a relationship. As with all concepts,
"nothing" presupposes that something exists so it is invalid to apply it to
all of existence which is how it is used in this question.

~~~
tim333
Dunno - "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?" seems a fairly strait
forward question - it's just the answer is tricky. If you don't like the term
"nothing" you can put it as "why is the universe here?" but it's still a
puzzle how the big bang and all that got here.

~~~
dmfdmf
All you have done is made the comparison implicit instead of explicit. The
full form of your question would be "Why is the Universe here (instead of not
here)" in which "not here" is just a euphemism or a form of "nothing". You
cannot escape the axioms that existence exists and that we know it. This is
the starting point of any claim to knowledge even claims that deny existence
or our awareness of it. That is what makes such questions invalid.

------
foldr
All deductive arguments are "question begging" in the sense that the
conclusion is already implicit in the premises. It's because the conclusion is
implicit in the premises that it's possible to _deduce_ the conclusion _from_
the premises. I would have appreciated some more discussion of what exactly it
is for a deductive argument to beg the question. Otherwise, all we have is the
unremarkable observation that arguments to the effect that something exists
usually have a premise or set of premises that entail a sentence of the form
"x exists".

------
hyoogle
One of my favorite responses to this question is from Philosopher Sidney
Morgenbesser. As it is put on a wikiquote page
([https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser)):

In response to Leibniz's ontological query "Why is there something rather than
nothing?" Morgenbesser answered "If there were nothing you'd still be
complaining!"

------
tim333
I'm not sure that style of "logical investigation" is going to get very far.
I've got my own theory that it's because necessary truths have to be, eg. five
being prime, these correspond pretty much to maths and reality is maths. Now
just to prove it...

