However, as explained earlier, only self-consistent “things” can start to exist, so that its existence don’t conflict with itself. Is this universe the only possible self-consistent thing that can exist or are there infinitely many (and different) such unverses? I don’t know. But we can understand that the laws of our universe is looking like mathematics because it must be self-consistent.

“We are free” meaning we are free from the circular logic using a god or something else existing to explain existence. We are free from the madness of the circular logic.

Notice that there are no other way to explain existence. We are stuck with this. You cannot use anything existing to explain existence. You are left with nothing.

I can’t see how such insight could make people behave like nazis. I think rational and good behavior is easier to achieve when people get a more rational view of the world.

Carl

Finally, what is so “free” about there not being a God? I can’t imagine you mean, we’re free morally to do as we please (all the horrible Nazi, Stalin, Inquisition, criminal etc, activity was really OK?) So, just how are we then “free” in any desirable sense?

But that is easy to understand.

1. “When” nothing exists there are no hinders for something (universes) to start to exist. Any such hinders don’t exist “when” nothing exist.

2. There are no conditions the need to be fulfilled for something to start to exist
“when” nothing exist. Any such conditions don’t exist “when” nothing exists.

3. No causation is needed for something to start to exist “when” nothing exits. Such need for causation does not exist “when” nothing exists.

There you all have it. Break free from the chains of circular logic and realize that we all come from nothing. There is no God. We are free.

Carl

And that this reality is all really based on nothingness.

Nevertheless we experience the world ‘out there’ as ’something’ rather than ‘nothing’.

In particular we measure the physical properties of objects, their mass, temperature, etc. etc. and can differentiate between ’something’ and ‘nothing’, e.g. the mass of an object is different from that of a vacuum of the same volume. Scientists then tend to want to develop theories to explain those properties.

Consistency in such measurements made by different observers verifies the physical nature of the object and leads us to believe in the reality of an external reality. It also encourages the search for properties that are conserved in interactions.

One of these verified physical properties is the property of an object’s existence.

Whether we think the question, “Why is there something rather than something?” is a meaningful question or not is a matter of personal choice.

Garth

An interesting question. But, from what I’ve come to realize (You don’t have to take my word for it, I will admit I am only 19 if that makes me any less wiser¿) is that the question actually is quite pointless. And not because it has no answer, but because I think people are not realizing that there is no difference. Something, or rather everything, is exactly the same as nothing.

Let me explain. Take anything. Any one thing you can think of. It doesn’t matter at all what it is. Now try to explain what it is. Now if you really consider how you just described that, you will realize that you described it relative to something else. Everything is relative to something else. Thus, every thing’s existence is relative to something else. There is no static element, no one standard, of what existence is and what isn’t.

To take one example I can say: What is an atom? A “thing” made up of electrons and protons. OK. Then, What is a proton? A “thing” made up of quarks. OK. Then, what is a quark? A “thing” made up of particles (i think they’re called baryons or Bosons or something) OK. What is a boson? A particle made up of little vibrating strings of energy (only assuming string theory is correct of course) and so on and so forth …

It probably won’t take long that physicists find that particles and strings can be broken down into even smaller parts. Physics has been finding smaller and smaller parts for the past century. But as you can see the first question, “What is an Atom?” wasn’t actually answered because we haven’t gone down to the core like the actual little bit that is a solid piece of existence. We just keep relating it to something else. In the case of this atom it’s almost like it’s collective groups of nothing done over and over again. You can even go the other way and say “What do atoms make up?” and go on into the infinity we know as space.

So, I have come to realize at this point in my life that this relativity we experience will continue on indefinitely. Infinity. And that this reality is all really based on nothingness. “And from Chaos came everything.”

It seems to me that we’re really all looking at exactly the same thing from a different point of view and since it is nearly impossible (and when I mean nearly I mean so close to absolute it’s not even funny) to see from someone else’s point of view one doubts and questions it and thus create his own universe where he is the point of origin. I think this is the whole thing behind the whole concept that everything is one and that this wholeness has been fractured creating all these separate view points and thus the whole universe.

I guess what I am trying to say is that if you take one thing and one thing only and stand it alone without a reference relative to something else it ceases to exist.

I see that the author Sean notes that eastern philosophies have no problem with nothingness. I think you can go a step further, at least in Buddhism, that nothingness is the final goal. Nirvana is the ultimate state of balance. Where there is no good or evil or anything for that matter. Nothing. It is balanced because there is no yin and because of that no yang and vice versa. There is no relative opposite to rationalize each other’s existence. That is true balance. And that is the goal. Where there is no more chaos or disharmony or everything, but nirvana or harmony or nothing. Basically achieveing Nirvana is allowing everything to return to the original one state and thus have nothing else to be referenced to and thus cease to exist.

So what I am saying here is we came from nothing and now we are everything and we should be trying to go back to nothing (so that we have no worries I guess). Or maybe some would like to keep everything¿

So all this rambling nonsense comes back to the original question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” And when you realize that nothing is everything and everything is nothing, you will then realize that the questions seems to sound more like “Why is there something rather than something?” or “Why is there nothing rather than nothing?” or “Why is there everything rather than everything?”

And now you can see why the question is actually pointless. It doesn’t really ask anything. But, there is no problem asking this question in any of the forms I presented. I feel that philosophy is really just elaborated bullshit because for the most part your just running around in circles when you think philosophically. I think this question can actually be simplified down to … “Why?”

Yes that is it. WHY?

Not one bit more knowledgeable after than before.

” sure, that’s why a nothing can’t change and turn into a something, ”

You should know by now that “when” something starts to exist, there is no change “in” nothing.

But that’s OK. Bye!

Carl

“Time does not exists before there is some change going on in this space.” - sure, that’s why a nothing can’t change and turn into a something, but there’s no point in hashing back and forth over this over and over.

Carl, we might stop talking about the ultimate “Why”, but we will never get to the end of it! That is the nature of such questions …

I think the excerpt from Jonathan just proves my point. “Qualia” is a concept so foggy it can’t be discussed in any meaningful way. That of course does not stop philosophers from filling large volumes nonsense about it. It can’t be discussed in a meaningful way before we have sufficient knowledge on how our minds work.

Count Iblis showed beautifully that we are just robots anyway. It does not matter if we are designed and constructed by DNA or designed by humans and built from transistors. We are of course all just various assemblies of molecules.

But even if I am a robot, I would not like to get tortured. Especially not by you, Neil!

The nature of time is not related to your experience of it. Space does not exist without something (objects, fields) “spanning” it. Time does not exists before there is some change going on in this space. It is this simple, since time cannot be measured unless there is some motion or change going on. There is simply no time in a space where nothing changes or moves.

Motion of objects makes is possible to measure time, just like objects at different locations makes it possible to measure distances. In an empty space without objects there no way to measure any distance (aside from the facts that there would be no one to do the measurement and that the space itself would not “physically” exist). The presence of “objects” span the space, and their motions generates time.

Now, are we finished discussing “why something rather than nothing”? If we are, I say good by to you all.

Carl

Here’s another Wittgenstein quote:
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.(T L-P 6.522)

Iblis:
I don’t think the replacement of neurons by transistors really makes any point against the phenomenal qualitative feel of experience. Either transistors can really be like the brain, in which case they really could produce real feelings, or they aren’t - and then it doesn’t matter. It isn’t at all guaranteed that transistors could really be enough like brain cells to do that, and it really isn’t clear what “functional” equivalence is anyway. Maybe something about the nature of real brain tissue, the flow of all those wave functions around, it not being a formal scheme, etc, we don’t know. Even if it acted like me, remember that the same result could come from an analog or a digital computer - and yet maybe that difference is critical to the nature of the experience it can produce. To those who complain that mysterians haven’t produced evidence of special mental characteristics, well: first of all, “evidence” is something we have through consciousness anyway, and second, no working model of a formal computing entity that acts like a person has yet been made. Game’s afoot.

PS: I think your blog was cool, please put up some new posts!

CalN, qualitative difference is a difference in kind that cannot be described as a rearrangement, as a new structure. Green does not look to us like one set of lines or dots and red like another, they both appear continuous, homogeneous, and different from each other. You just have to get it - how can a fundamental be gotten off the ground, when it is the sort of thing that everything else is defined by? Same for “time.”

My paradox: I would like to put up a diagram, but I haven’t got the hang of that for the blog yet. It’s just a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a gray filter in one leg.

The word and concept from Philosophy applicable is:

Qualia.

As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy begins:

First published Wed Aug 20, 1997; substantive revision Tue Jul 31, 2007

Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this standard, broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem.

The entry that follows is divided into eight sections. The first distinguishes various uses of the term ‘qualia’. The second addresses the question of which mental states have qualia. The third section brings out some of the main arguments for the view that qualia are irreducible and non-physical. The remaining sections focus on functionalism and qualia, the explanatory gap, qualia and introspection, representational theories of qualia, and finally the issue of qualia and simple minds.

* 1. Other Uses of the Term ‘Qualia’
* 2. Which Mental States Possess Qualia?
* 3. Are Qualia Irreducible, Non-Physical Entities?
* 4. Functionalism and Qualia
* 5. Qualia and the Explanatory Gap
* 6. Qualia and Introspection
* 7. Representational Theories of Qualia
* 8. Which Creatures Undergo States with Qualia?
* Bibliography
* Other Internet Resources
* Related Entries
[truncated]

Regarding time: The only way to measure it is to compare some motion/change against some reference motion/change (like the rotation of Earth). So time depends on change, not the other way around.

Classically: dx/dt = p. If we choose to regard p as more fundamental than t then we “generate” time dt = dx/p. Or use a wavefunction ø:

dø/dt = Hø (H a time-independent Hamiltonian). So “formally” dt = dø/(Hø).

Don’t take this literally, I’m just trying to make a point. Time is not “fundamental” in that we can choose what we regard as fundamental (p or t).
Time needs two things:

1. It needs the existence of some “objects” (minimum 2). More if time is also to be “observed”).

2. It needs for these objects to change or move relative to each other

Without this there is no time.

——-
Qualitative is like the experience difference between red and green (not to be confused with the actual light wavelengths, but the effect on you of signals from the different types of cones in your retina.) “Qualitative” means there is no structure defining the difference, but differs in an irreducible way about its identity. Either you get it/admit it or not, I only have so much time and effort to waste on anyone who doesn’t try hard enough to appreciate those sort of fundamentals of our real lives.
————

Yes, I simply do not get this. Either I’m stupid, or this is nonsense.

After a quick look at your blog, it was not easy to see what you’re trying to say.
It could take some time digest. A figure or two would help a lot.

Carl

I think that it is very difficult to deny that were are anything else than computer programs. What we experience is just a simulated world by the programs our brains are running, which is, of course, modelled after the “real world” using the information that we get from our senses.

In that world things like green and red objectively exist. But the way I perceive green may be slightly different from the way you perceive it, because you are in a different universe than I am (your program is different from mine, so you live in a different virtual world than I do).

BTW The issue of the wave function may be relevant, so, what do you think of it? (See my blog for a good paradox…)

Qualitative is like the experience difference between red and green (not to be confused with the actual light wavelengths, but the effect on you of signals from the different types of cones in your retina.) “Qualitative” means there is no structure defining the difference, but differs in an irreducible way about its identity. Either you get it/admit it or not, I only have so much time and effort to waste on anyone who doesn’t try hard enough to appreciate those sort of fundamentals of our real lives.

Sunil: Sure, this isn’t “science”, it’s philosophy - so? That’s what philosophy is all about. Why not tell the scientists to quit doing philosophy, instead of philosophers to quite doing “science” which they aren’t doing anyway in a case like this?

“It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.”

-Wittgenstein