Why is there something rather than nothing? (All Roads Lead to Russell)

[Music] for many years now a certain question has kept me up at night just as it's kept up many greater minds than mine the question is this who would win in a fight between ricky gervais but he has no arms or ability to laugh or stephen fry but he can't speak latin or exercise his divine charm no i just of course this is an easy question to answer as the comments below reveal rather the question that's kept me up at night is why is there something rather than nothing and i'm not talking nothing in the lawrence crowl sense of actually kind of something as is embodied in the mantra nothing is unstable sure it might be the case that virtual particles and space-time bubbles will spontaneously come into existence from a quantum vacuum but that's not the question that i at least want answered no what i want to know is why is there even a quantum vacuum at all why are there any dimensions any reasons any god why is there anything at all why not nothing this query has been called the fundamental question of metaphysics and famously bertrand russell's response was to say that there is no reason whatsoever stating i should say that the universe is just there and that's all it's a brute fact a fact that exists for no reason this no doubt is an extremely unsatisfying response i mean what would you think of me if i said there's no explanation for why i created this video you think i'm talking nonsense right there's always a reason indeed at all costs we don't want a brute fact in our world view as it's extremely ontologically expensive but what if i told you that just like russell you too have a brute fact in your worldview or worse if like russell you're well aware of this then you're probably smiling but if you're not aware of this or better yet if you're calling bull then strap in my fellow apes because you're in for a ride let's together explore the primary answers given to the primordial question and along the way expose some brutal brew facts [Music] when i was 12 years old i was lying in bed one night and suddenly i had this thought what if there were nothing john the question why is there something rather than nothing peter the question why is there something rather than nothing is perhaps the most fundamental deepest most difficult question that i can conceive of quentin if there is any question that has haunted me my entire life it is why not nothing why is there something rather than nothing richard when we think of why there is anything why is there something rather than nothing why anything at all why not nothing why is there something rather than nothing why is there anything at all mario why is there anything at all why is there anything at all i want to know why there is anything steve why is there something anything rather than nothing good question good sir well after reacquainting myself with a couple of books and papers on metaphysics and watching endless hours of robert lawrence kuhn asking everyone including the postman why is there something rather than nothing i've come to the conclusion that i often come to when considering both philosophy and science sean carroll is yet again the creme de la creme his communication on this question by my lights at least is second to none he's considered this question in a few places such as on his blog and in his podcast that i highly recommend of course but one of his most thorough deep dives is his phenomenal contribution to the routledge companion to philosophy of physics i am in fact going to use the structure of his essay as a template and so should the wonderful professor ever see this video cheers good sir i owe you a point or two the question of why the universe is the way that it is goes back as far as we have records but despite the brilliance of aristotle aquinas and averroes it wasn't until the 18th century that gottfried leibniz took us a step further by asking why is there something rather than nothing echoing aristotle's unmoved mover leibniz argued that god is the reason why the universe exists but that god's existence is his own reason since god exists necessarily so let's get some key terms on the table consider this beautiful mug that's full of freshly brewed coffee we can ask why is this mug full of coffee well there's a multiplicity of answers we can give such as that it's my mug and i like coffee or because i just walked into the kitchen and poured coffee into it or even that i have a very healthy and personal relationship with caffeine and if we want to get a bit more abstract we could say that the mug is full of coffee because we're allowed to exchange money for goods and services or as carol states in his podcast we could say that it's because space-time is four-dimensional or that gravity is attractive carol yes science with all of these answers we're entertaining an explanation or reason for the fact that this mug is full of coffee and further still we're explaining the fact by referencing other facts first if those other facts didn't exist then neither would my mug of coffee in philosophy these types of facts are known as contingent beings which as the stanford encyclopedia expresses are entities that exist but could have failed to exist my mug of coffee is a contingent being since for instance if we wasn't allowed to exchange money for goods then i almost certainly wouldn't have this mug at all and note here that a being in philosophy can mean just about any existing thing be it a concrete entity a proposition a relation a state of affairs possible worlds numbers and so on but what about our ability to exchange money for goods is this a contingent being yes it is since if we didn't desire goods then we wouldn't have created currency okay what about our desire for goods is this a contingent being yes it is since if we didn't need external resources to survive then we wouldn't desire goods and so on and so on either ad infinitum forever or until we land on a non-contingent being a being that could not have failed to exist these entities are known in philosophy as necessary beings and despite what some proponents might have you think they're controversial to say the least hume russell hawkins and indeed carol reject them but we'll expand upon this in chapter 3. so when leibniz said that god is a necessary being what he was saying is that god could not have failed to exist that god exists in all possible worlds that it's impossible for god not to have existed now you might be thinking if we're going to assume that a necessary being exists could we not just say that the universe itself is necessary that it's impossible for the universe not to exist yes you can and in such a case you wouldn't be additionally committing yourself like leibniz to an unembodied mind who really really hates flamboyant apes and shellfish oh yeah and despite being all loving explicitly endorses slavery in his good book but we get to god a little later first let's deal with some other non-answers given the laws of physics as we understand them it's quite plausible and in fact our universe has the characteristics of the universe if you were going to create a universe from nothing it would have the characteristics of the universe we live in within his essay carol categorizes the potential answers to the question of why is there something rather than nothing into five broad candidates and immediately after introducing each he distinguishes between two similar sounding but fundamentally different questions the first question is why is there stuff why is there anything inside the universe rather than just empty space and the second question is why is there space at all why is there anything that we would recognize as a universe refusing to beat around the bush carol states clearly it's the second question that most people have in mind when they ask why is there something rather than nothing but answers to the first question which are much easier to imagine obtaining have often been passed off as relevant to the second for instance when krause says if you were going to create a universe from nothing it would have the characteristics of the universe we live in he is passing off an answer to the first question as if it's relevant to the second now don't get me wrong if an empty quantum space a vacuum will spontaneously create particles and space-time bubbles then this is phenomenal in its own right but since a quantum vacuum is something this is not and cannot be an answer to the primordial question in essence it states the reason why there is something rather than nothing is because there's something a quantum vacuum thus this is a non-answer another candidate that carol considers is a principle that is there might be something special about the way our universe is which we could then point to as a reason why it exists the universe might be to give a few examples the most beautiful symmetric or minimal i mean to be fair the historical trend of science has been to explain complex phenomena through simple principles has it not carol gives the examples of newtonian mechanics unifying a multiplicity of physical phenomena maxwell's electromagnetism unifying electricity light magnetism and radio heat under one theory darwin's natural selection unifying all species under one single history of life on earth and einstein's general relativity unifying the three dimensions of space with time under space-time perhaps then at base there is an ultimate single unifying principle that we can one day hope to discover this would no doubt scratch our existential itch but would it really answer the primordial question no it wouldn't in essence it would answer the question of why is there something rather than nothing by saying that it's because there's something a principle thus this too is a non-answer and yet another candidate that carol considers is the metaverse perhaps a collection of truly distinct realities non-interacting not stemming from a common past not necessarily with the same laws of physics where in all possible states of affairs all possible worlds exist and we happen to live in one where there's a lot of some things the problem of course is that in addition to this being ontologically expensive i mean we'd have to assume the existence of an infinite number of other universes this supposed answer doesn't in fact provide an answer in essence we'd be asserting that the reason why there is something rather than nothing is because there's something a metaverse thus this too is a non-answer hence the primary lesson here is that many of the most prominent supposed answers to the primordial question reinterpret the keywords of something and nothing in a way that effectively avoids the question but even if we were to be maximally charitable and allow such an interpretation all we would be doing is kicking the can further down the road if we say that the answer to why is there something rather than nothing is because of a quantum vacuum or a principle or a metaverse then the immediate question that follows is why is there a quantum vacuum rather than nothing or why is there a principle rather than nothing or why is there a metaverse rather than nothing and how is one to answer these questions it seems to me that there's only really one option a brute fact all roads lead to russell why is there some quantum vacuum rather than nothing there just is why is there a principle rather than nothing there just is why is there a metaverse rather than nothing there just is it has no explanation but what if instead we say that it's necessary that there's a quantum vacuum that the universe itself is a necessary being or that god is a necessary being or a principle or what have you does this prevent us from having a brute fact in our worldview well let's find out the contingent being is a being which has not in itself the complete reason for its existence that's what i mean by a contingent being you know as well as i do that the existence of neither of us can be explained without reference to something or somebody outside us our parents for example the necessary being on the other hand means a being that must and cannot not exist to reiterate frederick culpepston's words you know as well as i do that the existence of a given thing within the universe has not in itself the complete reason for its existence or in other words that it's dependent on other existing things and thus is contingent well i say that you know as well as i but if you're an aesthetarian and are convinced that everything couldn't have been otherwise then of course you'll reject contingency outright alternatively you might reject the very notion of necessity outright and in such a case you'd be in very good company sat alongside the likes of hume kant russell hawkins and indeed carol yeah as you might already know or won't be surprised to hear this field of philosophy is controversial to say the least some philosophers believe in a necessary being whereas others don't replying to copleston here's why russell chiefly rejected the notion of necessary beings i will say that what you have been saying brings us back it seems to me to the ontological argument that there is a being whose essence involves existence so that his existence is analytic that seems to me to be impossible and it raises of course the question what one means by existence and as to this i think a subject named can never be significantly said to exist but only the subject described and that existence in fact quite definitely is not a predicate in his critique of pure reason emanuel can undercut the ontological argument by maintaining that existence is not a property but rather that which instantiates properties what we can ask is the difference between this brown mug and this existing brown mug well adding the word existing here doesn't do anything does it to be brown or even a mug it must already exist and so to say that something has a property is to presuppose its existence so in a nutshell russell rejected the notion of a necessary being since it defines something as having a property that is not in fact a property as far as russell was concerned the claim that god exists is a synthetic statement requiring empirical evidence one can't just define god to exist now there's much more to unpack here but this isn't the place nor time to do so i'd have to dedicate an entire video and more likely a series to adequately deal with the various arguments for and objections to necessary beings but i do think it's worth emphasizing that one there's plenty of people who reject the category of necessary beings and two unless we have extraordinary reason to accept the category of necessary beings we really shouldn't i mean to go back to the question of why am i making this video what would you think of me if i said that the reason i'm making this video is because it's impossible that i don't make this video that is that it's necessary that i make this video that i make this video in all possible worlds i for one would find this answer equally as absurd and unsatisfying as a brief fact many and theists especially are quite happy to create an entirely new category of explanation but i have to say i'm not so inclined but i do have a few books to go through in the following months that might sway me however let's tentatively place all concern aside as our purpose here is merely to question whether or not this would indeed satisfy the primordial question you know you imagine some explanation of the entire cosmos as you rightly say it would have to be something which as theologians and philosophers say has a necessary existence it must be it's self-sufficient it's got to be its own cause now people sometimes think that's god god is necessary existence it's his own cause and so on um i think david hume gave the right answer to that which is to say we don't know what anything could be like that has that property except possibly numbers but then whether they're things is a an issue um so if you if you want a necessary existence why not why not think of the whole world the cosmos itself is necessarily existent it's got as much acclaim to be necessarily existent as anything else you could imagine for example a mind or creating intelligence theologians try and get around that by saying that god is causing sui his own cause okay well let's suppose the world is its own cause if you're happy with the category of things that cause themselves that's your explanation and we see the universe and we don't see god exactly yes as simon blackburn said if we're happy with the category of things that cause themselves then why not say that the universe is necessary why should we say that the universe is contingent and then suppose that there's something additionally outside of the universe such as an unembodied mind that is necessary why postulate an extra thing or as carol purser all else being equal a self-explaining and necessary universe would be a simpler overall package than a self-explaining and necessary creator who then created the universe well the primary argument that's given by theists as to how we know the universe as a whole is a contingent being is due to the fact that everything within the universe is a contingent being this however is a fallacy of composition as hume and russell correctly identified well why stop at one particular object why shouldn't one raise the question of the cause of the existence of all particular objects because i see no reason to think there is any the whole concept of course is when we derive from our observation of particular things i see no reason whatsoever to suppose that the total has any cause whatsoever i can illustrate what seems to me to be your fallacy every man who exists has a mother and it used to be your argument is therefore the human race must have a mother but obviously the human race hasn't a mother that's a different logical sphere again this topic is deserving of its own series but if we suppose that there's a necessary being say the universe then have we really escaped a brute fact if when you ask why is there something rather than nothing i replied that it's because something is necessary have i really answered your question no i haven't since after kicking the can down the road the immediate question becomes why are there necessary beings rather than nothing and note here that my question doesn't pertain to a necessary being in and of itself but rather the set of necessary beings which would be a singleton if there's only one member why is it that there are some things that explain themselves rather than nothing on the one hand if we say that the reason why there's some necessary beings rather than nothing is because it's necessary that there's some necessary beings rather than nothing then we're both rendering the set as a member of itself and we're not actually answering the question since the necessary being is something not nothing and if we say as most theists do that it's just the case that there is a necessary being that it's a brute fact then we've now committed ourselves to two costly ontological prices you see for me the entire appeal of a necessary being is predicated on leibniz promised that it ends the infinite regress that it will answer the question why is there something rather than nothing but since on analysis it doesn't actually answer the question the appeal for me at least is no longer there but whether we suppose a necessary being or not it's clear i would argue that all of the proposed answers to the primordial question are in fact non-answers they all presuppose something be it a quantum state a principle a metaverse or a necessary being which all in turn either end in a brute fact or worse [Music] all right let's recap and wrap up in the first chapter we define two forms of explanation with the first being contingent beings which are entities that exist but might not have existed and the second being necessary beings which are entities that exist and could not have failed to exist in the second chapter we examined some of the primary answers given including a quantum vacuum a principle and a metaverse and concluded that these are at least ultimately non-answers since they are all something in other words they all state that the reason why there is something rather than nothing is because there's something finally in the third chapter we unpacked the notion of a necessary being considered a few objections and concluded or at least i concluded that the answer of a necessary being even if one exists is also a non-answer to the primordial question since a necessary being is something if we refrain from answering the primordial question then we technically avoid a root fact but as incredibly frustrating as it might be all of our most promising roads lead to russell anyhow before signing off i just want to plug the mug if you'd like to support the channel to support me in my quest of seeking truth and exposing those who pretend to have it then please do consider becoming a patron or youtube member it really does make a difference especially with the channel not doing so well with views lately and with that thank you kindly for the view and an extra special thank you to my wonderful patrons and youtube members much love

Channel: Rationality Rules

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Published: Fri Sep 10 2021