When we ask “why is there something rather than nothing” what does that mean?

307 views

I’ve been seeing this philosophical question popping up lately and I don’t understand the question even after Googling the explanation.

In: 5

24 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

We pretty much exclusively talk about causality when explaining things. One thing causes another, which causes another, which causes another. It’s hard to even imagine what it would mean for something to explain *why* without causality. But causality always requires a prior cause.

If you try and use that same way of explaining things while working backwards, eventually you come to a problem. You can keep asking “why?” after each explanation. Even if we knew everything about the laws governing our universe, you can still ask *why*. Why those laws? Why are they self consistent? If time is an emergent property of the universe what does it even mean to talk about causality before/without time?

And yet the one thing we can actually be sure of is that *something* exists. No matter how impossible it seems to derive existence from nonexistence, something still exists. Whether god created the universe, or we’re in a simulation, or there are infinite other universes with different laws of physics and life only arises where it’s possible, or if all of reality is just an infinite dimensional vector in hilbert space… none of those avoid the seemingly impossible fact that something does, truly, exist.

The only thing anyone can actually be sure of is also the thing that most defies explanation.

You are viewing 1 out of 24 answers, click here to view all answers.