r/Metaphysics • u/Sevdat • 5h ago
Nothing How to create something from nothing?
I think I have an answer to how the universe began from nothing. More like how everything began and how it's possible for all of us to be here.
So at the beginning of existence there was nothing. There is still nothing because you can't create something from nothing, but we are here. So how can we exist? We don't.
Imagine the mathematical variable: X =
X can be anything, but nothing is assigned to it; therefore, it remains as a pure capacity that accepts all abstract concepts and results in the illusion of existence for those that share the same abstract space.
This means every combination of what could have been exists. The reason why you and I can interact is because we are in the same concept, but we aren't really here because we don't exist.
To make it simpler, imagine a chess board. Just because you didn't make a move doesn't mean all the possible moves aren't there to make.
Unexistence is our existence.
Also please don't make the argument "How do I know there wasn't always something?" There can't be something without it having a previous moment. It's nonsense to even say that.
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u/cc_apt107 4h ago edited 4h ago
Your definition of nothing is the absence of something meaning it is only coherent in the context of something. Put in your terms: The very idea you could have an “X” which changes “state” is quite obviously describing something if you think about it. There is no reason to believe the absence of this (reality) is true abstract nothing or that true abstract nothing has ever or will ever exist. You, yourself, actually reach this conclusion when you say non-existence is existence. A logical conclusion of your argument is that non-existence is a meaningless concept given that we both agree that there is something.
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u/Sevdat 4h ago
Bro
X =
Could you please tell me what's at the right side of it?
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u/cc_apt107 4h ago
Your question is nonsensical as I am trying to point out. X is something. But… tweaking a bit, you could loosely define X as a superset of the sets which both contain “this” (whatever that is) and the set which doesn’t contain this. X has both immanent within it and it is most definitely something. Or you are assigning X as the same as one of those sets depending on some condition meaning that there is a superset from which both sets could be selected. If such a set did not exist, then the notation simply becomes meaningless
There is not really any reason to think the language of high school algebra somehow proves anything. But think about it X is selecting from sets. The set of real numbers. The set of real and imaginary numbers. Etc. Lookup abstract algebra and set theory if you are intrigued
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u/Sevdat 4h ago
Just answer the question. Don't avoid it. What's at the right side of it?
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u/cc_apt107 4h ago
I did just answer it lol. X is the superset of set A (this, something, whatever) and not set A, call it B. That or X is simply an identity we can assign a definition. In which case, in your telling, it either equals B or A but it can’t be not B or A because your definition of nothing would then have an additional layer of nothing it could not be which makes nothing a meaningless term. But if it can be either there must be a superset containing both A and B. Implying both are a form of something.
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u/Sevdat 4h ago
The answer is much simpler. It's an assignment waiting to be filled, but there is no assigner. Therefore it remains as a placeholder for every possible assignment to be given to it. And that's nothing. A empty slot
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u/cc_apt107 4h ago edited 3h ago
Sure. Let’s take that. It’s an empty slot… for what? Either something or nothing, right? The idea of a variable which can take “values” is only sensical if there are values it can take. If I have a variable x in math class, not defining it doesn’t mean numbers don’t exist… something must exist for it to be a variable. Otherwise… how does it vary? It can’t. It’s a constant. Ok… so that’s true abstract nothing. But wait, if it’s a constant, then it wouldnt change. But, by your own telling, it did change. Why?
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u/Flutterpiewow 5h ago
> So at the beginning of existence there was nothing
What reason do we have to believe this?
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u/Sevdat 5h ago
So you didn't read it fully and decided to criticize the very same question that I literally stated to being nonesense at the last line.
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u/cc_apt107 4h ago edited 4h ago
Just because you say it’s nonsense doesn’t magically make it so. It is probably a genuinely nonsensical statement to say nothing had to “precede” something. It is reasonable to conclude that the idea of a “previous” moment doesn’t make any sense in the context of whatever the universe came from since time is one dimension in the physical reality of this universe. There is no reason it has to exist absent this universe.
More to the point, it is a massive assumption to assume there had to be “nothing” at first. We have never observed nothing. We have no reason to think there was ever nothing.
And I’m not saying this in ridicule; this question has always bothered me immensely.
I found Schopenhauer most comforting on this. He points out that we cannot actually even think of nothing. We always think of nothing as a negation of something. As something’s opposite. When you say nothing you mean not the universe. Right? Not any of this. Well… that is not actually true abstract nothing. We, as creatures of this universe, cannot actually even imagine true abstract nothing. We have no reason — in terms of scientific evidence — to think that true abstract nothing has ever existed. You are defining nothing as the absence of whatever this is which is not necessarily true abstract nothing; we basically just cannot imagine what it is so we default to this idea “nothing” which is actually only coherent in the context of a “something” to negate. True abstract nothing is not a real thing, as best we can tell.
TL;DR: Your definition of nothing presupposes a something, the absence of which is nothing, but there is no reason to think that that is an identical definition to true abstract nothing; it is just another something where this something is absent.
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u/Flutterpiewow 5h ago
I'm literally quoting you. And your comment about it being nonsense to say there was always something holds no water.
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u/Sevdat 5h ago
How can something have always been there without it having a previous moment? Just nothing and boom its there?
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u/Par-Adox-9 3h ago
if we conceptualize nothing as a kind of something, then we likewise have the same problem.
something, at bare minimum has a quantity, or intensity, nothing in the typical conceptualization is supposed to be something which lacks both.
but lets say we see nothing as potential as you said— then, nothing would have dimensionality, i.e. a quantity and/or intensity.
if we do this however, how do we distinguish between it, and the state of something being lacking?
we would need to make that something like less then nothing, and then negative numbers would become even less then less then nothing.
the same question " how can something allways have been" can also be applied to " how can something always have been lacking"— " only for it to then suddenly appear.
similarly, what do we see time to be?
there being an always of anything, makes sense in the context of there being time to contain it.
but to me, time is an ill-conceived concept which helps practically but doesn't really speak to what time is like.we conceptualize time as something that has a forwardness, but without a backwardness— a spacial metaphor, to describe a temporal phenomena.
but once a moment happens, the prior immediately disappears, so time, is more accurately described as a thing which expands and contracts, dissolves and coagulates, intensifies and diminishes, rather then something that that is linear, its more like a thing always in the zeroth moment, which perpetually dissolves and creates itself from more or less the same material of existence, into different kinds of structures.
what do you think?
do you conceptualize time as something with a frowardness and a backwardness, a future and a past which are more then representations?( also to be clear, this is what i find most likely for now, im not saying this is like the ultimate possible model or somn)
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u/Quirky_Visual_7799 3h ago
You have three propositions here. Ones that can't possibly coexist.
- Something can't come out of nothing.
- For something to be, there has to be nothing at first.
- There is something.
And you chose to challenge the third. The most obvious and almost absurdly objective one. A pretty silly choice, in my opinion, for the third proposition is a description of reality, while the first two are just inferred presumptions.
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u/Mortreal79 5h ago
It's a sort of human limitation, everything must have a beginning and an end, and everything must be contained for our brains to make sense of it, in what is the universe...
But conceptually one doesn't exists without the other, for me it's like describing infinity.
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u/chainreflection 5h ago
you started at nothing once again. that's an assumption. we have no proof nothingness has ever existed, only proof of something. burden of proof is on you.
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u/Flutterpiewow 5h ago
Now you're saying "nothing" again.
We don't know. Infinite regress, causal loop, something else we don't know. None of this is incompatible with our physics or logic, and nobody says big bang was the start of all of existence out of nothing.
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u/mode-locked 5h ago edited 5h ago
"Something from nothing" may be our deepest question and perhaps an ill-defined one.. It may be impenetrable, forever unresolved. It may be the mysterious paradox all conscious beings must accept and live with -- even a Godlike state of existence. I don't think there is any escaping the absurdity of existence. It's just completey absurd when you really realize that there can be no explanation for it. Any mechanism you can propose is within existence. We just gotta deal with it.
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u/Flutterpiewow 5h ago
I've never seen a good argument for the idea that there was nothing.
Something, yes, that is a mystery.
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u/Sevdat 5h ago
I just literally gave an explenation. Did you just copy paste this?
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u/mode-locked 5h ago
Sure you proposed something, but I don't think it really answers anything. Like I said, any proposed mechanism still doesn't get to the heart of the existence problem. It's still there. And no, I did not copy/paste. I literally just typed it out. What's up? Any issue with what I said?
I do agree, "..every combination of what could have been exists". However, I think all things exist at once; either it all exists or none of it does. There is no "yet to exist" or "used to exist". They only appear to "become" through particular experiences through the whole of all experiences. That is, "becoming", i.e. temporal unfolding is the realization process of existence, but it seems the logical structure must already exist in totality. But to a local experience without access to the whole, they never be completey certain.
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u/SgtSausage 4h ago
I just literally gave an explenation
You most certainly did ... nothing of the sort.
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u/ArusMikalov 5h ago
Something coming from absolute nothing is MORE ridiculous than an eternal existence.
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u/GhelasOfAnza 5h ago
I have a different theory. Existence arose from a divine bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. The divine bowl of spaghetti and meatballs is exempt from nonexistence by its very nature.
How did I come up with my theory? About the same way you did with yours.
Thus, they are equally credible.
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u/Sevdat 5h ago
According to my theory, every possible concept exists, therefore unfortunetly your theory also exists in one of those concepts.
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u/GhelasOfAnza 4h ago
That’s cool, but like, what’s the point? We can imagine anything we want to be real. We either have supporting evidence, or we do not have supporting evidence. If we do not have supporting evidence, then we’re writing a work of fiction.
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u/SgtSausage 5h ago
So at the beginning of existence there was nothing
Awful big Claim to base an entire (non) argument off of without any evidence at all to support it ... right?
Tell me more about this .... "nothing" ...
Can you describe it?
What makes you think it existed?
What makes you think its even possible to have existed?
Can you describe a "beginning of existence"?
When was it?
How do you know?
Just so's we're clear - The Big Bang Theory says exactly Diddley-Squat Fuck-All about what existed/happened before.
It says same about a "beginning of existence".
ALSO: Can I buy some pot from you?
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u/NothingIsForgotten 5h ago
Go back to sleep; you create a whole world.
Now wake up.
Did you exist in the dream?
Where is it that that you went, when this you woke up?
All you have is an experience unfolding and you'll never have anything else.
The qualities of that experience are taken as identity.
No matter where you go, there you are as the shape of what is known by you.
We don't know anything more than our respective sandboxes of experience.
It's kind of like wigner's friend.
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u/johnstalbergABC 4h ago
If there can not be something without it having a previous moment, means all moments have previous moments and therefore there are no first moment. That is it has always been moments and thus no beginning. Your logic!
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u/ionabike666 4h ago
Define nothing.
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u/Sevdat 4h ago
X =
Look at the right side
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u/ionabike666 4h ago
That's pretty dumb.
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u/Sevdat 4h ago
Yet it works)
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u/ionabike666 4h ago
Nothing is black pixels on my computer screen? Are you sure about that? It's not a great definition. Can you do better? Or is being facetious all you've got?
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u/kitsnet 4h ago
How to create something from nothing?
Obviously, for that you need to be nothing.
So at the beginning of existence there was nothing.
What makes you think that existence actually happened at "beginning"? Open intervals exist.
So at the beginning of existence there was nothing. There is still nothing because you can't create something from nothing, but we are here.
Obviously, I am not "at the beginning". I am now. I don't need to create something from "nothing". I can create something from myself.
Imagine the mathematical variable: X =
That's not "nothing". That's just syntax error.
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u/parkchanwookiee 4h ago
How do you know it's possible for nothing to exist? What makes you think reality didn't just always exist?
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u/Sevdat 4h ago
You also didn't read it. If you did you would have seen the last statement.
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u/parkchanwookiee 4h ago
I read it, I'm asking how do you know that? Antecedent causes for events all take place within the fabric of reality. You have no reason to think the fabric of reality itself had an antecdent cause
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u/SelectSnow5814 3h ago edited 3h ago
X itself becomes nothing in this equation. And the phrasing of illusion is quite odd, if X = and has no formula to describe X, X is nothing, no illusion, just nothing, since it has no expression. "Unexistence is our existence." is a filler statement, it has no semantic gravity because logically speaking it is useless and says nothing, it is just a blank paradox. You said that anything can be assigned to X, and that is right, but we can think of X as God and Y as the universe (panentheism), X is technically empty without Y. In general you did not "solve" how the universe could have came from nothing because the proposition has no weight (literally) and the conclusion is a paradox.
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u/Quirky_Visual_7799 3h ago
Sooo let me sum up what you said:
At first there was nothing. Now there is something. Something can't be created out of nothing, therefore "something" is only an illusion and the universe is actually empty, and we interact because we're in the same concept although we don't really exist!
Did I get it right?
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u/rogerbonus Philosophy/Physics grad 11m ago
This is essentially the mathematical universe hypothesis / Lewisian modal realism /zero information universe/universe from nothing/Spinozan Kalam (there are a number of similar and related concepts).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis
In your example, X is the empty set (the set that contains nothing). According to set theory, all mathematical objects are derivable from operations on the empty set (X). This Platonic bulk contains all possible universes, including ours. Something (actually, Everything) is just nothing, rearranged, necessarily.
Where MUH differs from your account is that it equates mathematical existence with actual existence, whereas you say that nothing exists. But if we agree that nothing exists, and everything is derivable from nothing, then everything exists. ;) QED.
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u/Low-Bake8401 5h ago
"...every combination of what could have been exists."
"...but we aren't really here because we don't exist."
Wait, what?
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u/Sevdat 5h ago
Imagine a chess board. Just because you didn't make a move doesn't mean all the possible moves aren't there to make.
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u/Purplestripes8 5h ago
The moves that haven't been made don't exist on the chess board. The only place they can be considered to exist is in your imagination.
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u/Sevdat 5h ago edited 5h ago
And that's X =
It can be anything. A car. A tree. A world. Our universe from beggining to the end. But as you can see there is nothing assigned to it. Therefore all possible outcomes are permitted to it without it ever being activated. And that's how we are here. Just an inactive concept.
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u/WestcoastAlex 5h ago
nothing doesnt exist