Hi. I've been reading the postings of this group
for
awhile but haven't yet posted anything on my own.
However,
the question of "Why is there something rather than
nothing?" is of interest to me, so, if you're
interested
here are my thoughts.
Overall, my answer to the question of "why is
there
something rather than nothing?" is that something and
nothing are really one and same thing, just seen from
different perspectives. The perspective that sees
nothing
as nothing is the one where we're thinking of
nothingness in our
minds. The perspective in which nothing is the same
as
something is the one in which all things, including
our
minds are gone. I came to that conclusion by two
different
arguments:
1. If we ask why is there something than nothing,
there seem
to be 2 choices:
A. Something has always been here.
B. Something has not always been here.
While choice A is possible, it doesn't offer any
real
explanation. So, in exploring choice B, if something
has
not always been here, that means that nothing was here
before it. So, this means that nothing was there
then, but
now there's something. When there was nothing (ie, no
thing, ideas, numbers, matter, energy, volume, etc.
exists), there would be no mechanism that exists to
turn
this nothing into something else called something.
Assuming
there is something now, the only possible choice is
that
nothing and something are one and the same.
2. I first considered the question of why anything
exists
at all and then tried to apply that to "nothing" to
see if
it exists.
A. What I came up with is that something exists if
it is
a whole, an entirety, etc. By this, I mean is
it
completely defined as to what is in the thing?
Wholes
have edges defining what exactly is in the
whole. The
edge isn't a separate structure; it's just the
wholeness, the complete grouping or complete
definition
itself. Edges give something substance, and
this is
why we think of wholes as existing.
B. I then arbitarilly defined things that exist
(ie,
space, time, matter, energy, ideas, volume,
minds,
etc.) as occupying volume. It doesn't matter
whether
you use volume or some other word, I just wanted
to
put a name to this.
C. Non-existence is the lack of all things, or, in
other
words, the lack of all volume, or zero volume.
With
non-existence, even our minds that are
considering
non-existence would be gone. Because of this
point,
one can never prove anything about
non-existence, but
we can at least try to think of what properties
it
might have.
D. I then tried to think if zero volume meets the
definition of a whole.
o Are there any things missing? No.
o Does zero volume include all? Yes.
o Is zero volume completely defined as to what
it is? Yes.
This then suggests that zero volume is a whole,
and
this wholeness is the same as an edge or
boundary
defining an existent state, ie, the existent
state of
non-existence.
We have trouble considering non-existence as something
that
exists because we can only think of non-existence from
the
perspectives of our minds, which exist. Only once all
things are gone, including our minds, does zero-volume
become the all, completely defined and, therefore, a
whole
and something that exists. In other words, in our
minds, we
must consider zero-volume/non-existence based on the
pre-existing concept of existence. But, non-existence
itself, not our minds' visualization of non-existence,
does
not have this restriction. It meets the definition of
a
whole on its own, separate from our minds'
restrictions.
For this and many other problems, I think it's very
important to separate our minds' conceptions of
something from the thing itself. They're two
different
things.
If you've read this far, I appreciate your
listening!
Those are my crazy ideas. If you're interested, more
thinking on this and other topics is at my website, at
www.geocities.com/roger846
Thanks!
Roger Granet
~
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Received on Mon Mar 06 2006 - 21:28:57 PST