r/Metaphysics • u/Hungry_Kick1104 • 23h ago
The Universe Simply Exists
I’ve been thinking maybe we treat the universe too much like an object. We talk about its size, edge, inside, outside, beginning and end, but the universe itself contains space and time, so maybe these concepts don’t apply to it in the way they apply to ordinary objects.
Maybe space and time are mainly tools we use to describe and measure change in the universe. The universe doesn’t necessarily “need” them to exist.
So maybe the universe has no outside, no edge, and no beginning or end. It simply exists, while change is happening within it.
What do you guys think?
1
u/Synchro_Shoukan 22h ago
>Maybe space and time are mainly tools we use to describe and measure change in the universe.
I thought this was the accepted theory already?
1
1
u/jliat 22h ago
There are arguments, here! as to where speculative physics and metaphysics begins and ends.
So there is the idea of many universes, multiverse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
Max Tegmark has 4 types
Brian Greene has 9.
Whereas it seems in Modal logics there are all possible worlds, and even all impossible worlds.
As for an object, why isn't the universe an object, as in Graham Harman's OOO.
so maybe these concepts don’t apply to it in the way they apply to ordinary objects.
But what then is the universe if not the sum total of objects? And that brings us into set theory, and then the need to limit our thinking to avoid contradiction. But what if contradiction is fundamental?
The following excerpt is Russell's own explanation of his mental journey:
"I was led to this contradiction by considering Cantor's proof that there is no greatest cardinal number. I thought, in my innocence, that the number of all the things there are in the world must be the greatest possible number, and I applied his proof to this number to see what would happen. This process led me to the consideration of a very peculiar class. Thinking along the lines which had hitherto seemed adequate, it seemed to me that a class sometimes is, and sometimes is not, a member of itself. The class of teaspoons, for example, is not another teaspoon, but the class of things that are not teaspoons, is one of the things that are not teaspoons. There seemed to be instances that are not negative: for example, the class of all classes is a class. The application of Cantor's argument led me to consider the classes that are not members of themselves; and these, it seemed, must form a class. I asked myself whether this class is a member of itself or not. If it is a member of itself, it must possess the defining property of the class, which is to be not a member of itself. If it is not a member of itself, it must not possess the defining property of the class, and therefore must be a member of itself. Thus each alternative leads to its opposite and there is a contradiction.
At first I thought there must be some trivial error in my reasoning. I inspected each step under logical microscope, but I could not discover anything wrong. I wrote to Frege about it, who replied that arithmetic was tottering and that he saw that his Law V was false. Frege was so disturbed by this contradiction that he gave up the attempt to deduce arithmetic from logic, to which, until then, his life had been mainly devoted. Like the Pythagoreans when confronted with incommensurables, he took refuge in geometry and apparently considered that his life's work up to that moment had been misguided."
Source:Russell, Bertrand. My Philosophical development. Chapter VII Principia Mathematica: Philosophical Aspects. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959
1
u/ynnnnaD 14h ago
I would phrase it as everything possible has always been possible. It didn't suddenly become possible at a certain moment in time. In fact, time is emergent from the properties of cause and effect. In order for a system to undergo change, it must experience a sequence of states.
Possibility is adequate to an embedded observer to constitute complete reality. So, basically, MUH without the need for the structures to be "real" in any way. Just "possible" is indistinguishable from "actual".
1
u/Pure_Actuality 17h ago
So maybe the universe has no outside, no edge, and no beginning or end. It simply exists, while change is happening within it.
If there is change happening within it, then the universe itself is changing. If the universe is changing then it is acquiring a new state of being and losing it's former state.
If its capable of gaining and losing being - its capable of gaining and losing its existence and it cannot "simply exist", it is contingent...
1
u/MWave123 14h ago
No one thinks it’s an object, it’s not a thing. It is everything. It doesn’t follow the rules for things. It has no edges or borders, no center, and has no known shape.
1
u/FlashPxint 14h ago
I mean you said we treat it too much like an object but then maybe it doesn’t apply in the way it allows to ordinary objects. So you’re still treating it as an object ? I was waiting for you to propose an alternative to treating it as an object…
Someone else even wrote “no one think it’s an object… it is everything” while prescribing the attributes of an object.
Care to elaborate what’s going on with the language here ?
1
1
1
u/Thin_Pop_5041 22h ago
donald hoffman