/lit/ - Literature

Because there is. Why shouldn't there be?

There is

Because it was willed.

Because something is stronger than nothing

because muh antropocentric universe

cause that which is is and that which aint aint.

maybe there's nothing next door, but here there is something
in fact, there has to be nothing

>>7080342
nigga u deep smh tbh

Cuz then we get to build nothing out of something, brah

Because nothing can't exist

because God ofc

define nothing

>>7080379
the absence of something

>>7080379
define "define"

>>7080354
so nothing is nothing?

>>7080385
define "define"

Why do you believe there isn't both nothing and something?

>>7080390
define "define 'define' "

Somthing is the default

>>7080394
Can you rephrase the question?

>>7080404
define rephrase
define question

>>7080408
>still hasn't defined "define"

nothingness is in itself something, and something is also nothingness

the tension between these opposites results in "becoming", which is why the universe exists

everything is dialectical, and everything is dialectical because God himself is dialectical, and from this, all things come

the father is the power, the something
the son is the Logos, the wisdom of the something, which in itself (the wisdom) is nothing
the spirit proceeds from the father and the son in an eternal dialectical synthesis between the two

>>7080417
>nothingness is in itself something, and something is also nothingness

nah thats just that we are retarded with language

>>7080417
>nothingness is in itself something
Nope, nothingness is nothingness, there's nothing.
>something is also nothingness
Something is something.
A is A, not Not-A.
2/10 see me after class

>>7080417
This is how I imagine you

Because quantum fluctuations of the void.

>>7080435
nigga pls, dont you understand OPs question?

>>7080321
Because you can only experience something. So if there was nothing, you couldn't exist. But because withing the possibilities of existence, something is existing; you can experience it. Physicists made this answer long ago, you are quite obviously not a true patrician so please go back to your cuck posts.

>>7080435
I like when philosophers and physicists get together. The physicists get all pissed off

Philosophers are good trolls

>>7080448
>Because you can only experience something.
>"only these things exist because I can't experience the other ones"
Are you really THIS fucking stupid?

>>7080435
How does the void have quantum fluctuations?

Nothing is more common than something, we just notice this something because we are part of it.

>>7080486
Nothingness is infinite?

My intuition tells me that humans will never be able to answer two questions:

1. What is the mechanism by which consciousness exists?

2. Why is there being rather than nothingness?

The first can be framed, "Granted an objective reality, how does subjectivity exist?"

The second, for reasons I can't quite explain, I think is the same as "Granted subjective experience, how does objectivity exist?"

(It may have something to do with the fact that we recognize our own oblivion in one possibility and the conditions for our existence in the other.)


This is why I get the feeling that the whole of philosophy is an enormous exploration of possible meanings of objectivity and subjectivity and the relations in between (or whether such distinctions exist etc.)

Buddha talked of "no self" and a kind of co-dependence of reality and observation. The scientists speak of a way by which observers can come to know objective reality through their experience. The mystics, in all their varieties, sought a union of self and reality. Hegel discussed the reunion of subjectivity and objectivity through the historical refinement of ideas.

>>7080474
Exactly. If a void is fluctuating, something is fluctuating.

The problem with any talk about "before" the big bang is that there was no space or time "before". There is no "before". If you imagine a singularity hanging in an eternal nothingness, you're doing it wrong, because the singularity which expanded is itself the eternal nothingness.

Which actually IS A THING.

God

>>7080531
Why is there God instead of nothing?

>>7080462
Your reading comprehension is terrible, you are in no position to call anyone else stupid.

>>7080531
What is this picture showing?

>>7080435

This line, which comes from a Lawrence Krauss lecture on Youtube, bothers me for several reasons.

In the first place, it's clear that the "nothingness" which Krauss has in mind is not the "nothingness" which philosophers consider when posing the question.

In the second place, this position has no force unless one grasps the theoretical reasons behind it. An extremely small number of people are equipped to consider the theory, and yet a very large number of people are quite happy to believe it by virtue of specialist testimony. If you are serious about addressing the question or putting forward this particular attempt at a solution, then you need to start hitting the books. Otherwise this is just a curious thing you once heard somehwere, and under this characterization it should be clear that this is no basis for our approach to life or our broader beliefs (although in reality the relationship is quite the inverse: ie, it's one's existing, more general beliefs ("science is accurate" exg) which drive one to accept this notion)

>>7080539
because meaning is inherited from the god

>>7080560

>In the first place, it's clear that the "nothingness" which Krauss has in mind is not the "nothingness" which philosophers consider when posing the question.

Luckily, no one today gives a shit about what philosophers think

While everyone in this thread is within the domain of limits on possible questions which humans can consider, everyone is well outside the set of questions which we can pose which we can also answer.

Godel.jpeg
wittgenstein.png

>>7080462
You can only know of what exists within your available time and space. It is very likely that it is impossible that anyone could know otherwise. But because you can observe this universe, all other possibilities are more or less wrong. But in regards to the Ops question; things that exist here and now, are what you can experience and know. Anything that exists outside of that you can't know, and you can't say they exist because you don't know what it is and you cannot prove that it exists. "You" as for lack of a better term--a spook, cannot experience anything other than what you already have. So those objects of which you have not experienced, to you, do not exist; until you have gone through the act of experiencing. Until then it is an infinite juxtaposition of possibilities of which none can be quantified.

How stupid do you have to be to not understand this?

>>7080539
Maybe God is the conscious void. Shit, if voids, a literal nothing, can have quantum fluctuations, why can't it also be aware of itself?

Not that I believe in transcendence or it's opposite, that God is actually the universe, but there hasn't ever been a reason posited to me that suggests God is impossible, just really improbable.

>>7080560
When I saw Krauss on Colbert Report, I was disappointed that a scientist didn't know that redefining a word was not a legitimate basis for an argument.

>>7080576
>here's this flavor of ice cream I haven't tried yet, but it doesn't exist because I haven't tried it yet
>other people are tasting it, it exists, but it doesn't exist because I haven't tasted it
This is you, right now - a literal retard.

>>7080547
Some three by three thread. It was supposed to be the nine people who have had the greatest intellectual or moral influence on you

>>7080570

People clearly consider both philosophy and science valid means of inquiry. I don't know what your problem is.

But returning to the matter at hand, the question we really asked when we were kids, the one that kicked off our inquiry into all things, was "wait, why is there anything at all?"

And I don't think Krauss or anyone has given a satisfactory answer, and if someone did develop a satisfactory answer it would probably be a monumental event in the history of human ideas which would have profound implications.

>>7080570
you are just being ignorant mate

>>7080560
>Otherwise this is just a curious thing you once heard somehwere

this, its nothing more of a belief to common people than it was a belief of God centuries ago, i.e. people spouting shit out of their mouth without understanding the concepts (of God or quantum physics). This is why scientism is retarded.

>>7080572
only correct answer

>>7080588
That sounded like a cool thread, but Marx is on there so it's automatically shit. At least he has Kant, Plato and Hegel.

>>7080570
No one gives a shit what a dipshit like Krauss thinks either.

"Nothing" means nothing. It means non-existence. It doesn't mean a quantum vacuum.

To turn it around, it would be like a someone claiming that God certainly exists, because "God" as theologians and philosophers have defined it is wrong, and that God actually means "candy corn."

>>7080585

It's kind of embarrassing to use the ol argumentum ab dairy past middle school. But if you use the demon who casts an illusion of ice cream on you it really is that easy

>>7080593

>you are just being ignorant mate

Then please give me one practical application developed in the past few years we only could have gotten from philosophy

>>7080599
A lot of people give a shit about what Krauss thinks.

>>7080603
Computers

>>7080572
prove it

>>7080570
They should. Coming from someone that knows people in actual research, whether in polymers, quantum mechanics, medicine - scientists are for the most part not the person of passionate wonder that popsci and pop culture paints them to be. Groundbreaking thoughts and thinkers are rare in philosophy, but it's rarer in science, and it's impossible to find anywhere outside of philosophy and science.

>>7080604
Even if everyone in the world cared, it still doesn't redefine the meaning of the word "nothing" to "quantum vacuums." Nothing means nothing.

>>7080598
>Plato
What about Aristotle?

>>7080628
He's not bad either, but he's too much of a fedora for me.

>>7080585
This is purely on an individual scale, with only your understanding. But that breaks down with the ability to communicate with others of their experiences.

But what I'm trying to explain is a sort of Schrödinger's cat-esque point. In that that which no one has experienced, technically does not exist and remains a juxtaposition of all possibilities, until the act of experiencing in which the juxtaposition of possibilities breaks down to revel it's truth.

No one has ever experienced another universe so for us, relatively, it does not exist. The same goes for "nothing", in that you cannot experience nothing or nothingness, so for us, nothing cannot exist, only something.

I've tried to explain the nothing/something duality to you, but if you can't understand it you are likely to be an idiot.

>>7080603

Not the guy you're talking to but:

1) the belief that a method of inquiry is only so useful as the products of its thought is a philosophical position

2) The development of scientific (as opposed to non scientific) methods of inquiry was concomittant with the development of philosophical settings which permit experimentation and science as valid. In other words, you couldn't possibly have developed "modern science" (A theory of reality, observation and empirical knowledge equipped with a set of technical processes for discovering) without a combination of Galileo, Descartes, Copernicus, Spinoza etc.

>>7080608

Developed by hobbyists and programmers, didn't need a single philosopher, was developed mostly through a small group of people tinkering

>>7080598
Bourgeois detected, shut it down

>>7080634
Schodringer's cat is bullshit. Even if not a single one of us has looked inside the box, the cat is either alive or dead. It's lying dead inside the box or alive inside the box, it doesn't matter if we haven't looked.
You sound like fucking Barkley, except you're a fedora.

>>7080640
Do you even know anything about Turing?

>>7080622
Most STEMfags are borderline retarded spergs, which is why STEM people are often huge fans of genre fiction garbage. They tend to have very childlike, immature minds when it comes to anything but muh STEM.

>>7080649
The point is you cannot and will not ever know whether it's dead or not.

>>7080651
philosophy is just as spergery as stem, the only difference there is no money and no utility in philosophy

>>7080656
>the point is you won't know because you haven't checked
Have you considered killing yourself?

>>7080640

There are different types of thinkers and minds. Some prefer technical and specific problems. Others prefer philosophical and general problems.

And there's everything in between!

I think you'll find that a lot of people are very interested in both (Einstein loved philosophy in addition to physics, for example).

It's just stupid to think all good things are invented by the specific-technical minded and that everything dreamed up by the genera-philosophical minded are useless, especially when there are deep relationships running between general ideas and specific settings.

>>7080649
Well, it's great that you've successfully disproven quantum mechanics by shitposting on /lit/.

>>7080321
Because if there was nothing instead of something, you wouldn't be able to ask that question.

>>7080669
edgy

>>7080633
What about Aristotle makes him a "fedora"?

>>7080656
>these are the people that share this board with you

I think a person really shows their politics when they have disdain for philosophy

>>7080669
>>7080667
>>7080656
>>7080651
>>7080650
>>7080649

Well this derailed quickly. Fuck you guys for ruining yet another thread.

There have been a million versions of the "STEM vs Philosophy" or "Continental vs Analytic" or what have you all over this sight. But I guess you just HAD to have another one. Fucking A. You people are the reason this website sucks.

>>7080685
He doesn't believe in a God.
Well, there's the unmoved mover, but it's not exactly a "god", you get what I mean if you know his philosophy.

>>7080435
>>7080560
I read Krauss' book 'The Universe from Nothing' a while back, can't remember the specifics of his argument, or how he uses terminology but it's basically pretty simple:

>Space expands forwards in time
>It must contract backwards in time
>It is reasonable to conclude that there was once a 'big bang' where the universe was infinitely small, ie. time zero
>We know from relativity that spacetime is the 'fabric' (exceptionally pleb-tier terminology) of the universe
>Therefore there cannot be either an 'outside' the universe, nor a 'before' or 'after' it
>Therefore nothing 'caused' the big bang, as causation requires passage of time, whereas time exists only in (/as) the universe

This is why things like
>quantum fluctuations of the void
are utterly thick and meaningless. Rejection of the above argument is just inability to realise that the way we think about space and time must be altered when we talk about not things in the universe, but the universe itself.

>>7080649
Schrödinger's cat is bullshit because the cat observes whether it is alive or dead.

>>7080649
The point is that YOU cannot know whether the cat is dead or alive. The cat can know all it wants, but it means nothing to you.

This is a well known fact about epistemology and yet you deny it. Do you not understand it, or do you refuse to understand it?

>>7080689
you cant have a conversation with MUH SCIENCE fedora fags that have the idea of philosophy from market value of that field.
And this is coming from guy with scientific education.

>>7080704
>The point is that YOU cannot know whether the cat is dead or alive. The cat can know all it wants, but it means nothing to you.
That's not what the thought experiment was about.

>>7080701
But you don't.

>>7080649
>>7080656
>>7080704
For what it's worth, Schrodinger's Cat is an awful pop-sci rendition of a legit phenomenon. A particle of dust in space, let alone a cat, is sufficiently large, ie complex, that it has no discernible quantum behaviour, unlike, eg a single particle or atom.

the quantum uncertainty that you experience simply reflects your inability to self-locate in space, i.e., to know which of your infinitely many copies throughout space is the one having your subjective perceptions

>>7080719
do you even know what are u talking about?

the level of ignorance in this thread is off the charts

>>7080421
>>7080427
>>7080432
>analytics
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeEEEE

>>7080719
I know it's a terrible pop-sci subject, but the person I was talking to didn't get my point. So I reduced the explanation to lay men's terms because he's a fucking moron.

>>7080723
m8 im a stem fag

>>7080724
but analytics are patricians

I just finished Jim Holt's book about the question.

It was shit.

>>7080727
it wasnt about a quantum behaviour of a cat you fucking retard

>>7080713
But I used it as an anecdote to prove my original point. The actual thought experiment was meant to explain a legitimate quantum phenomenon, but also, in a way; proves my point.

>>7080691
The unmoved mover IS God. It's just not a personal God.

>>7080734
thats how people know it though

>>7080743
>>7080687
It was about an effect of quantum uncertainty on a cat.

>>7080737
not rly tbh but w/e

>>7080778
why not just have the second panel be the first

>>7080687
Putting your cat in a box with poison is animal cruelty, and people should quit glorifying Schrodinger's antics.

>>7080796
I don't get it either, there is no reason to switch them at all

>>7080796
cuz ur a fucking kike that's why

>>7080321
No pepe post deserves a serious answer. Fuck, you already know you're shitposting so it deserves no answer at all, yet I'm typing this.

Pure ideology.

you some top notch cheeky lads /lit/

>>7080321
So that you would ask.

>>7081025
It's just a fucking image you fucking retard.

>>7081128
Frogposters consistently post the worst meming for meming's sake threads, so no, it's not just an image - it's a badge of /tv/-tier cancer.

There might be a universe in which nothing exists but we're not in that universe because if we were, you wouldn't be sitting there at your computer asking these questions.

>>7080321
the principle of sufficient reason is not exceptionless

>>7080342
nice

>>7081135
shut up you faggot

neil degras tyson says there's more matter than antimatter that's why :))

there's no reason for it

The world exists to satisfy the desire for beauty, truth, goodness, love, and the other faces of the same all and nothing. A desire for nothing is a desire for something but an absence of desire is nothing and this desire and this nothing are also faces of the all and nothing. The all and nothing is becoming. Becoming is something and nothing, a polarity of the life-drive and death-drive, where it flows and sways eternally.

>>7080321

Nobody actually knows.

>>7080321
>>7080561
>>7081244
>>7081296


Because if not we wouldn't be able to ask that question.

It's quite simple really.

>>7081309

No, it's not. That's a true statement but it doesn't answer the question.

"Why have you taken me hostage against my wishes??!"

"because otherwise you would never have asked that question!"

>>7081280
>The world exists to satisfy the desire for beauty

then why do you worship a downsy-looking cherubian coke whore

>>7081329

>implying person didn't exist before becoming a hostage

>>7081335

She's beautiful, you slag!

>>7080321

I think the better question is: why assume that there is any thinkable alternative to "something"?

I ask this because I'm not quick to grant that the term "nothing" is intelligible.

Ask yourself: what do I think of when I try to think of "nothing"? Do I think of a black void? Then I'm merely thinking of empty space, and space is something; I'm also thinking of some content filling those spatial dimensions, the blackness, and "blackness" is something. The only way I think of "nothing" is to be unconscious - to not be thinking at all. So it seems impossible to think of from an experiential point of view.

It also seems impossible to think of from a logical point of view. "Nothing," "non-being," seems to me like a self-contradictory term, technically meaningless, like "square circle." Rather than a conceivable term, a legitimate concept, "nothing" seems like an attempt to combine the concept "being" and the concept of negation - an attempt that is bound to fail.

We can negate particular things, saying "X is not a cat" - but this requires that we think of X as belonging to SOME other class of concepts; maybe X belongs to the class of "dog" concepts, maybe to the class of "jellyfish" concepts, maybe to the class of "mineral" concepts. Even if I don't think of it as placed in any determinate class, I have to think of it as belonging to some as-yet-unspecified-to-me class. We can only perform negation when there remain classes besides the ones we exclude by that negation.

But to negate things-in-general, to negate thinghood, being, is to attempt to locate X outside of any and all classes. "Being" is the most general kind of concept we can form, one that applies to any and every particular thing; every class of concepts are just specific divisions underneath the concept "being," so there are no classes remaining outside of it that allow us to place any non-being in.

I think we are confused by the vagueness, the extreme abstractness, the concepts "non" and "being," and this makes the contradiction of their attempted unison less palpable - less so than the very glaring contradiction of "square circle," each term of which is well defined and easy to visualize, thus making their incompatibility similarly easy to recognize. Also, we go around negating individual things so regularly, with such force of habit, that we could easily assume that we can negate ANY concept and still yield an intelligible result.

So I believe >>7080354 and >>7080379 were on the right track.

>>7080321
Because things that are not can't be. You can't have "nothing isn't, everything is," because if nothing wasn't you'd have all kinds of shit like giant ants with top hats dancing around. There's no room for all that shit.

>>7080432

Pic related is probably more what you should imagine.

>>7080427

>A is A, not Not-A.

According to Charles Taylor's interpretation, the idea is that contradiction isn't impossible in the universe, but required for growth; it's the "motor" that generates the development towards Absolute Spirit, as the oppositions seek to cancel one another out and spawn newer stages of opposition.

>>7081549
your post sings in praise of Jackson Crowther

>>7081703
Oh, nice. Someone got it

>>7080321
Nothingness is an imagination of the human mind, that's why. There is no "something vs. nothing".

>>7081955
just say social construct next time so i dont end up reading your whole post

>>7080578

> voids, a literal nothing

I think you're confusing emptiness with "nothingness," which seems like a common and easy error.

>>7081549

>>7080321
you wouldn't understand the answer to this question because a humans brain and capability to udnerstand is too limited. I mean, it's already hard for us to somehow imagine 4d (spatial). How can you even think of being able to udnerstand questions liek yours?

>>7080321
The question of why is meaningless and a human construct, there is no motive, it is a question of how. And the answer will be some infinitely and impossibly complex physical laws that we just don't understand yet.

>>7083429
Why there are some impossibly complex physical laws that happened to make these quantum fluctuations and our universe instead of nothing?

>>7080321
Because "nothing" is unstable.

>>7080354
>mfw nothing is so beta it excluded itself
B T F O

>>7083556
edgy bullshit

>>7083594
What if... it isn't?

>>7080321
What does this even mean?
Do you mean 'what event caused the beginning of existence'?
Or 'why does existence exist in some spiritual sense'?
Either way shut up.
Who cares.

>>7083596
how did u come to such conclusion?

>>7083605

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation

>>7083610
>muh fluctuation argument again

>>7083504

You seem to not understand the question mate

>>7083610
It has already been "discussed"

>>7080435
>>7080443
>>7080458
>>7080474
>>7080509

Because you are an observer and the presence of an observer makes something other than nothing necessary. At least the observer has to exist. But usually not only the observer himself but whatever world brought him into existence. Places which are pure nothingness can not be observed.

It may also be possible that nothingness is really just a phantom, sort of a defect in the human brain. Have you ever seen it ? Inb4: empty space is not nothing, it's quantum foam.

>>7080342
this.

>>7080712
Not him. but is that difficult to ignore things you don't agree for the sake of the thread ?

>>7083556

> "nothing" is
> is

>>7081549

Why can "Why?" questions be asked?

>>7080321
Dr.Lawrence Krauss said so.

what do you think about
>>7080338

The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the Earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.). A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the Earth's history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!). This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the Sun. At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question — so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold!

>>7084714
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

>>7080696
>>Therefore there cannot be either an 'outside' the universe, nor a 'before' or 'after' it
>>Therefore nothing 'caused' the big bang, as causation requires passage of time, whereas time exists only in (/as) the universe
Plot twist: Our universe is a simulation.

>>7084742

Plot twist: our universe is a representation.

>>7080505
Nothingness is infinite, somethingness is finite. We pay more attention to the finite somethingness because we are inside of it, but really it's insignificantly small and statistically can't even be said to exist.

Nothing is what really exists.
Noting lasts forever.

>>7084742
Its easy to think of an universe as a running program constituting AIs within it.

Firstly, someone has to write the code - set the variables, create the physics, define maths.
Then there has to be something that switches the program on--which happens to be big bang and the program itself is so structurally and logically sound that it run towards us now.

>>7084777

How could we possibly, even in principle, pay attention to what isn't even there to be paid attention to?

>>7081549

Is The Art of the Deal worth reading?

>>7080321
You're walking into a "Yo Momma" joke, kind sir. I would advise you to watch your step.

>>7080321
god needed something Other by which to define himself

now the universe moves like a bi-polar magnet trapped within a unipolar sphere: indefinitely.

>>7081703
fuck I read his book on Hegel

it SUCKED. but still the only pragmatic interpretation so everyone will have to wait til i publish my own

>>7080506
interesting and original my man

>>7083610
quantum physics is one massive contradiction at heart

so we go back to Hegel.... again.

>>7084783
the simulation argument isn't really that strong since it's pretty clear that it wouldn't make sense for one intelligent life to be able to create a simulated infinitude and not themselves understand it. So we have to assume that the simulator is more like a god-entity and he just "felt" like creating us broken creatures so you end up at basic monotheism. You just happen to use contemporary terms, you've really said nothing new at all.

>>7085517
no that's just Hegel.

>>7085543
Yeah this. even if the universe is simulated AND we assume what you posted is not the case then these god-programmers are probably wrestling with the same questions, so all we end up doing is moving the goalposts down one degree and are back to square one.

>>7085613

> all we end up doing is moving the goalposts down one degree and are back to square one.

Isn't the case with all examples of explanation? I'm not trying to defend the "simulation" concept - only wondering if it isn't a feature of all explanations that they recurringly lead us to ask of the currently-most-fundamental explanation X: "so what in turn explains the forces and laws operating in X?"

nothing only exists as a concept within the 'something'