Anthony A.C. Grayling - Why Not Nothing?

Anthony when I was a child about 12 years old one summer I was in bed thinking about things and suddenly I realized what if there were nothing at all and I got so scared I repressed the thought for decades and I knew there was something that was on my mind and then and then finally I remembered it and its really refocused me on the the big question why is there something rather than nothing which is so much more fundamental than does God exist for example how do we even begin to address that question but as you know it happens in contemporary physics there's some discussion about the possibilities it's quite hard for there to be nothing I mean quantum reality tells us that these spontaneous emergence of elementary particles is a statistical necessity if you like but I don't know that that that's because there's laws of physics of quantum physics that determines the characteristics of empty space that's not nothing well that's true empty space is not nothing sacred which is a good stuff and I think and I think this very seriously that there are sorts of questions that we can ask ourselves which are strictly meaningless and for that reason I'll answer bar and the question why is there something rather than nothing falls into the same category of questions as if there were an omnipotent being could it eat itself for breakfast or yeah the sort of question which makes grammatical and lexical sense that actually it doesn't give us a possible what color is the word or through what colors there's you can green ideas sleep furiously there anything a lot of a lot of mistakes are being made but when we ask a question it presupposes that that there is an answer of a category suited to the nature of the question and in questions of ultimate generality or questions which have the appearance of being grammatically well formed it may really be that they that there is anything behind them at all and there is a particular reason for this and that is that language is an iterative device on a finite stock of words of the finite set of grammatical rules you can generate an infinite number of well-formed grammatically well formed sentences which may nevertheless be and they were perfectly perfect examples to something I say I can trisect an angle using any ruler and compass for example so it may very well be that that question why is there something rather than nothing could there be nothing it is something necessary but those sorts of questions there are family on them the jury tried formulate oriented again all of them get no grip on a possible answer and that's that's a position it's a it's a position of last resort and once you believe that you're at a full stop but you're a full stop with the full form universe that you got and and and and and you can't do anything but the question is is that question is there something rather than nothing that kind of question the color of the / of the letter three I mean the question is is that question the same can you conceive I mean I can conceive of there being nothing else would scared me when I was a kid well compared to the kinds of questions that do have answers you can begin to reach for do some work for I'm given that there is something what is it what's it like what is it ultimate nature what is its structure what is there but what in what there is really matters what's the value now those sorts of questions have juice in them you can get to grips with them and you can you can start to figure out answers for them and you may make tremendous discoveries in the process of trying to answer those questions but a question which you know has the character of a immensely tall glass tube that you expected to climb up and you'll never will get it up it's a kind of futile self-defeating question is this a throwback to the logical positivism where if I can't sense it or it's not a logical deduction it's meaningless well no not really and that indeed is what the bosses of this thought that there are a range of occurrences which in fact because nothing counts as a test of them and are meaningless for that reason they don't make sense of strictly speaking nonsensical this is a grammatically well formed sentence which seduces us into thing that there has to be some wonderfully deep in a tremendous answer if only we knew how to reach out for that kind of answer the sorts of answers there would be a preacher a fact that the sorts of answers that people gave why is this another money because Fred wanted it or Fred made it or something that themselves of course only extend the vacuity of them yet we can conceive of there being nothing and yet there is something are you saying that it is utterly meaningless question or that it is not able to be answered very different approaches because the latter is a brute fact Bertrand Russell said something in fact universe is here and that's all I mean he refused to say anything more about it which was I think his way of saying it's a brute fact and we can't know now that's a fair answer it may or may not be true but but it's a defensible position I'm not sure if you're saying that it's a brute fact that there is something or it's really a meaningless question and weak and it doesn't make any sense but two different things I mean it is a brute fact that there is something that that I think we will agree on who had better and but that it without that brute that means without explanation oh well I don't know said you don't mean that I mean what there is something yeah I mean this universe can't be explained a lot of physics with it nothing about that that there is something at all rather than nothing is a brute fact yeah we can really know on that on that definition of goodness I think we have to just say it's a fact that the university system there are all sorts of interesting questions we can ask about you should ask a cultural but but but to get back to our question the the meanings of the meaninglessness of the question is relative to its own answerability what makes a question on a empty or meaningless the fact that nothing counts as an answer to it look at the presupposition well this is on the right I don't have an answer that's just sure but I it's not just because you say it doesn't mean there isn't an answer well I think it does I mean it's not just that I'm you know anticipating future discoveries of an answer to this question what I'm doing is I'm saying it has a certain kind of logical character think think of something similar think of a a question like this if I said I am here could I ever be wrong now we know that whenever you say I am here that's a self clarifying truth I am wherever I am so if ever I say I'm here good so if I ask the question could it ever be the case that saying I am here I would be uttering a falsehood is that you can see despite being a grammatical sentence sort of meaning this one it's missed the whole point even and that's what I'm saying about this kind of question that it's a logical reason why it makes no sense because it's a logical fact about that kind of question like the question can an omnipotent being easier sell for breakfast it's a logical reason buy so if I give you that if I go with you on that what would seem to follow is that because there is something I can't that question is meaningless but there is something therefore that something whatever it is has to be a brute fact well again again is that a consequences that follow directly from what you said not if we're going to use your definition of Brutus because if Brutus means inexplicable or unexplained Oz it means inexplicable that's one thing if it means unexplained that's just a matter of history is it my country so we're getting into semantics here we may be may not be an interesting point I figure if we think of if we were to think of other kinds of questions you might ask could there be that's the point there is no other question that has that same character to it they're ones that sound nice and and they're very interesting and that are interesting in themselves but I really doubt there's any question that could be put in the category of why is there something rather than nothing but there are kinds of questions which have the same logical character like this one why is everything not bigger than it is or couldn't it be the case that's at all subsuming it assumes itself within the question exactly but if you take that for why there is something rather than nothing it's saying that something exists of necessarily and that that's a definition of brute fact well again I'm troubled by that I dated factual nature of it and the brute nosov the fact in question when it's not a matter of facts it seems to me a matter more of logic that we're talking about the kind of question that we could make sense of that would give it meaning and what gives meaning to questions is the capacity we have aren't you

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 37,862

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Keywords: Anthony A.C. Grayling, Closer To Truth, Nothing, Philosophy, God, Physics, Cosmology, Causality

Id: Bds92P1wkZU

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2017