Why is there anything at all? The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics: Part One: "The Darkest Question in All Philosophy"

The question "Why is there anything at all?" It is perhaps the most difficult and frustrating metaphysical question of all. Whether the universe was created out of nothing or whether it is eternal, the fact of its existence is an enigma that science stands in front of with amazement and helplessness

By: Marius Cohen

formulation of the problem

One of the central questions in metaphysics, which was first formulated by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a philosopher of the 17th and 18th centuries, is the question: "Why is there anything at all?" In his article "Principles of nature and grace founded on reason", published in 1714, Leibniz wrote:

"When we rely on the great principle that is usually underused, a principle that teaches us that nothing is done without sufficient reason... When this principle is established, the first question we are allowed to ask will be this: Why is there something and not nothing? After all, nothingness is simple and easy to talk about. And no more, except that if it is assumed that things need to exist, it must be possible to give reason, Why should they be found this way and not otherwise?. "¹

As Leibniz did well to understand, the question "Why is there anything at all?" Closely related to the question "Why is something this way and not another way?" But let's leave the accompanying question for now, and we'll come back to it later.

In his book "Introduction to Metaphysics", which was published in 1953, Martin Heidegger, a philosopher of the 20th century, also presented the question "Why is there anything at all?" and called her The fundamental question of metaphysics. Among other things, Heidegger wrote, that "both the individual man and the nations often question their historical course in time. They search and investigate and test many things before they come across the question: 'Why is there anything at all and not nothing?' Each of us has been hurt once, and maybe even from time to time, fromThe hidden power of this question"²

Heidegger, who did not try to answer the question himself, considered it the most comprehensive, profound and original question. In the eyes of many philosophers, this question is indeed considered the most difficult and frustrating metaphysical question of all, until William James, a psychologist and philosopher of the 19th and 20th centuries, even called it "the darkest question in all of philosophy."

Arthur Witherall, a contemporary philosopher, believes that the uniqueness of the problem is that we fail to see the explanatory space of a possible answer. All the usual explanations fail, claims Witherwell, and we are confronted with something enormous, something beyond the comprehension of common sense. This is also the opinion of Robert Nozick, also a contemporary philosopher, who claims that the fundamental question marks the limit of our ability to understand, and this is because there is no conceivable answer in the space of possibilities of the causal chain leading to contemporary events. And these are the options that Nozic offers:

1. The universe was created and something was the reason for its creation. By virtue of the requirement that the cause precede the result, this necessarily preceded the creation of the universe, but by definition the universe includes everything, and a contradiction is obtained. Even if we choose to see the cause of the creation of the universe as something outside the universe itself, even if only for theoretical reasons, we will still want to apply the fundamental question of metaphysics to it as well, which will bring us back to the starting point. Everything that is included in a possible causal explanation for the question "why is there anything at all", is also itself "something", therefore such an explanation cannot be complete.
2. The universe was created without a reason. The causal chain is finite, and based on cryptic facts (that is, those that have no explanation). Although some justify this position on the basis of the rejection of the other alternatives, this is not a sufficient answer, neither from a scientific point of view nor from a philosophical point of view. Since the spontaneous formation (that is, without a reason) of a single grain of sand is also unthinkable, the claim regarding the spontaneous formation of the entire universe requires weighty arguments, and we don't have any.
3. The universe was not created. It has always existed, and the causal chain is endless. In this case, even if it is possible to find a causal explanation for every event, the existence of the entire space-time and its contents remains unexplained, which is again jarring against the simpler possibility (as Leibniz also believed), that the universe did not exist at all.

If so, both Heidegger's description of the question as having a hidden power and the nickname that William James gave it derive from it being arousing wonder, awe and frustration perhaps more than any other philosophical question: the fact of the existence of the universe, about the space and time that constitute it, and about the matter and energy that fill it , is paradoxical, since the mind does not tolerate either the possibility that the universe suddenly came into being full of nothing, since nothingness cannot provide a primary cause for creation, nor the alternative possibility, that the universe has always existed (as, for example, Aristotle and Newton believed) without any transcendent reason for its existence, since even if it is possible to explain each event on the basis of previous events, we still have no explanation for the existence of the chain of events as a whole, and for the existence of the entire space-time for its content.

Even the science of physics, which is supposed to be the supreme authority when it comes to the universe as a whole, is not only unable to answer the question, but is also unable to offer a suitable framework for a possible answer. In the last hundred years, modern physics (including modern cosmology) had a huge success when it discovered many of the mysteries of the universe, which had disappeared from our eyes throughout the thousands of years of human civilization; However, when faced with this basic and troubling question: "How is it that there is a universe at all?" She remains helpless. The famous physicist Stephen Hawking (Hawking) wondered about the fact of the existence of the world in his writing: "What is it that breathes life into the equations, that creates a universe that behaves according to them? … Why does the universe bother to exist?”³

 

An unanswered question? The pessimistic position

Compared to the various attempts to answer the fundamental question, which we will deal with later, there is the pessimistic approach which criticizes these attempts in principle, and claims that the fundamental question of metaphysics is a question that cannot be answered. Below we will examine some such positions, and try to see why, nevertheless, even in this context there is room for a little optimism.

Although no one doubts that the question is understandable, some argue that it is meaningless from the point of view that it is flawed, and therefore it is not legitimate: Alfred J. Ayer, a philosopher of the 20th century and a distinct representative of logical positivism (a current that advocatedThe principle of authentication, according to which claims, which cannot be empirically verified in principle, are meaningless), claimed that the verification criterion for the existence of meaningful claims also applies to questions: we need to know which observations will lead to a possible answer, and if we fail to find such observations, it means that it is not a meaningful question meaning, even if due to its grammatical formulation it pretends to be such. Since it is impossible to imagine any observations that might lead us to an answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics, then according to this position the question "Why is there anything at all?" It is meaningless.

However, the main weakness of the principle of verification is that it itself does not meet the strict criteria it sets, and therefore it states also about itself that it is meaningless. Also, according to this principle, many "why" questions are supposed to be meaningless, such as the question: "why bodies fall". There are no observations that can answer the "why". However, there is no obstacle that within the framework of a theory, which can be refuted or confirmed in principle through observations, an answer will also be given to the questions "why". Even simple everyday questions like "Why are you smiling?" do not meet the strict verification criterion, but we certainly do not want to claim that they have no meaning. Therefore, the verification criterion does not establish that the fundamental question of metaphysics is meaningless. Even if today we grope in the fog in everything that concerns a possible answer to the question, it is not impossible that in the future some kind of scientific theory will be found, which can be empirically confirmed, and within which an answer will also be given to this difficult question.

Another pessimistic position that holds that the fundamental question of metaphysics is meaningless is represented by Paul Edwards (Edwards), a contemporary philosopher, who holds that the logical grammar of the word "why" is violated by this question, rendering it meaningless. The question "why something" presupposes the existence of conditions that are not included in the thing we are asking about, and which may serve as a basis for an adequate explanation for it. In particular, when we are looking for a causal explanation, the question assumes conditions that preceded the same thing in time, and with the help of which it can be explained (if we ask, for example, why a certain tree fell, we assume that there were conditions that preceded the fall of the tree, and to which we turn to provide the explanation the desired, such as: a strong gust of wind, the rotting of the roots, the crumbling of the soil). In the absence of such conditions, Edwards claims, the question "why" loses its usual meaning and leaves no logical space for a possible answer. When it comes to the question "Why is there anything at all?" After all, because of the scope of the question, they won't be possible in principle Conditions that are not included in that "something", and in particular conditions that precede it, since these conditions are themselves something, and therefore necessarily included in the thing about which we ask.

Edwards's position is indeed acceptable if the question "Why is there anything at all?" aimed at a causal explanation (as expected from a wish about physical existence). In this case the requirement for previous conditions in time cannot indeed be fulfilled, whether the world was created out of nothing or whether it has always existed. On the other hand, if we aim at a non-causal explanation, such as a logical explanation or a mathematical explanation, the requirement for previous conditions in time has no meaning. Thus, for example, the explanation that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180° does not use the dimension of time, and all the conditions that the explanation refers to, such as the axioms of Euclidean geometry and the rules of logical deduction, do not precede in time the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180°. In fact, time is not a player at all in the geometric proof game. Since the only justification for requiring prior conditions in time is the expectation of a causal explanation, then a non-causal explanation for the fundamental question of metaphysics does meet this criticism. However, the possibility that the answer to the question "Why is there anything at all?" Be on the basis of a non-causal explanation raises the question of whether a naturalistic framework, i.e. one that is compatible with the insights of modern science, can even provide a non-causal explanation for a physical fact (the fact that something exists). The answer to this is positive: modern science also uses non-causal explanations, such as, for example, reductive explanations (the phenomenon of heat is explained through the movement of molecules) or probabilistic (in quantum theory, for example). We will see this later.

Adolf Grünbaum, a contemporary philosopher of science, brings a pessimistic position that integrates Edwards' criticism in the framework of physical theory. Grunbaum believes that under the premise that the birth of the universe (if there was such a thing) was also the birth of space-time, it would be meaningless to ask about causes preceding the event in time, since the event itself constitutes the beginning of time. Grunbaum claims that when you ask the question you imagine an empty universe in which matter and energy suddenly appear, but this is a misconception. The phrase "before the universe was" has no meaning. The claim that the formation of the universe is a serious violation of the law of conservation of matter and energy, because the amount of energy at the moment of the formation of the universe is different from that which preceded this moment, is meaningless, because there is no such thing as "before the formation of the universe". Any description in terms of time is flawed in this context, says Grunbaum, such as physicist Orear's description of creation as "sudden", since "sudden" is a time-based concept. According to Grunbaum, even if the universe had a starting point, then the entire universe, the matter and energy in it, as well as the space-time itself, has existed from time immemorial - as the phrase "from time immemorial" refers to every moment in time starting from the moment of creation. The renowned physicist Steven Weinberg also holds a position similar to that of Grunbaum, who says that by virtue of the fact that under normal conditions every given moment has a moment that preceded it, it is impossible to conclude that under exceptional conditions such as those that prevailed in the Big Bang there was no such exceptional moment, which was not preceded by any other moment . This is similar, says Weinberg, to the assumption based on our daily experiences that it can always be even colder, or that it is always possible to move further north. However, in exceptional conditions, such as absolute zero temperature or the North Pole, these options are not available to us; Neither the expression "colder than absolute zero" nor the expression "north of the North Pole" are coherent expressions. It is possible, then, that in comparison the expression "before the big bang" is also not coherent, and this is contrary to our daily experience and our intuitions, that there is always a meaning to the use of the word "before" in the context of each and every moment in time.

However, such a position is not sufficient, because even if every event in time has an explanation based on previous events (under Grünbaum's assumption that the beginning of the universe cannot be considered an event in time), we still have no explanation for the existence of the chain of events as a whole, and for the existence of the entire space-time on its contents. Grunbaum claims that the universe exists as a law of nature, and therefore there is no need to explain its existence just as there is no need to explain the law of persistence. However, this comparison is flawed, because a body that continues its equal-velocity movement does not undergo substantial changes (as it appears from the theory of relativity, space and time coordinates do not increase substantially. Just as it is possible to map the Earth using different systems of coordinates without the system chosen being part of the surface structure on the site certain, so also the space and time coordinates of an event, as they are determined in the system of a particular observer, are not part of the description of reality). That is, the only change that a constant body in its equal-velocity motion goes through is not a fundamental change and therefore the law of persistence does not require an explanation. On the other hand, the existence of a universe is fundamentally different from its non-existence, so that even if this existence is indeed the result of some physical law, the question "why" still has meaning in this context.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein), an influential philosopher of the 20th century, believed that, like the other metaphysical questions, the question "Why is there anything at all?" separated from the field of factual discourse because factual discourse deals with the facts of the world, and is unable to meaningfully express what is outside of it. Since the fact of the existence of the world is not a fact of the world itself, any reference to it, whether as a question or as an answer, is meaningless. But the fact is that there is something, whether in Wittgenstein's view this fact is in the world or not, and it seems that the question of "why" regarding every fact is meaningful, whether the answer to the question is available to us or not. In his later philosophy, Wittgenstein took a different line of reasoning: we accept a certain fact only when we can imagine its negation; To marvel at the existence of the world is meaningless because we cannot imagine its non-existence. But this argument is improbable because the entire preoccupation with the question, from Leibniz to the present day, stems from the fact that not only are we able to imagine nothingness (perhaps not as an image, but conceptually certainly yes), but we even perceive it intuitively as simpler than the existence of something.

The attempt to doubt the existence of the fundamental question is not successful, therefore. It seems that a sufficient and necessary condition for a meaningful "why" question is the fact that it is asked about some kind of fact. For questions like "Why is it raining?" or "Why didn't you return the book to the library?" There is meaning if it does rain and if you really didn't return the book to the library; Otherwise, i.e. if it is not raining or if you did return the book to the library, they are meaningless (in that case it is a type of failure A loaded question או A complex question). Hence, if something exists, then the question why it exists is legitimate, and we expect an appropriate answer in some theoretical framework: the answer to the question "Why are there locusts?" In principle, the answer to the question "Why are there stars?" should be given within the framework of a biological-evolutionary theory. should be given in a cosmological-astrophysical framework and the answer to the question "Why is there inflation?" will be given in the framework of economic theory. Only questions like "Why are there fish on the moon?" or "Why is there inflation?" When there is no inflation they are meaningless (in the sense that they have a failure). There is no doubt that a question like the fundamental question of metaphysics, for which it is not clear what the appropriate theoretical framework is to answer it, is a problematic question, but this does not make it meaningless. The fact is that there is something, and therefore also the question "Why is there something?" There is meaning. This also seems to be how Leibniz perceives you The principle of sufficient taste:

"... and that of the sufficient reason, by virtue of which we think that no fact can be true or exist, and no sentence can be true without sufficient reason, why is it so and not otherwise; Although these tastes, for the most part we will not be able to know them at all."⁴

Some thinkers believe that even if the fundamental question of metaphysics itself has meaning, it cannot be answered since there is no explanation for the existence of the universe. Bertrand Russell (Russell), a philosopher of the 19th and 20th centuries, claimed that the universe does not need an explanation, and that it simply exists. According to him, we cannot apply the concept of causality, which is taken from our daily experience, to the entire universe, a concept that is not subject to our experience. Such an attempt to apply the concept of causality is based on his claim on Assembly failure, where one incorrectly concludes from the properties of the parts to the properties of the whole: an object that consists of only light parts is not necessarily light in itself. Or an example that Russell himself gave: from the fact that every person has a mother, it cannot be concluded that the entire human race has a mother. An argument in this spirit is sometimes also made against the background of quantum theory, according to which events at the subatomic level occur in a non-causal manner, which proves that the principle of causality is not universal, and therefore it is not necessary to apply it to the moment of creation as well. The problem with this argument is that, even though the connection at the microscopic level between cause and effect is looser than at the macroscopic level, quantum events also occur against the background of given physical states, which are necessary (even if not sufficient) for their occurrence. But it is impossible to assume any physical condition as a basis for giving an answer to the question "Why is there anything at all?" After all, a physical state is conditioned on the existence of something (nothing has no states).

Quentin Smith (Smith), a contemporary philosopher, claims that the idea of ​​a causal factor for the formation of the universe is not coherent, since every causal factor itself is conditioned on the existence of something. Here Smith uses Edwards' argument, but reaches a different conclusion: the question has meaning, but it has no answer. According to him, the universe is a unique, contingent existence (that is, accidental, not necessary), which has no reason or any other rational explanation. The contemporary philosopher Derek Parfit also believes that the existence of the world cannot be explained causally. In his opinion, no law of nature can explain the fact of the existence of the laws of nature, and like Smith he is ready to accept the possibility that the existence of the universe has no rational explanation at all. It is not impossible, he claims, that at the base of existence there are obscure facts, that is, facts that have no explanation. Parfit claims that from a logical space of possibilities (such as the possibility of the existence of a world versus the possibility of its non-existence) there is a logical necessity for one of the possibilities to exist, but it is possible that there is no selection mechanism between the various possibilities, and the fact that one particular possibility exists in the space of possibilities is a casual fact. This position does not seem convincing, because even if there is a logical necessity, for example, that at every moment one particular weather will prevail out of the logical space of possible weathers there is still an explanation, at each such moment, why this particular weather prevails and not another (even if this explanation is not always available to us).

The concept of "casual facts" is so unusual in our rational perception of the world that there seems to be no justification for using it to answer any question, including the fundamental question of metaphysics, even if the difficulty of answering it obviously requires looking for unconventional solutions. The claim that the existence of a universe of vast dimensions and teeming with happenings does not need an explanation is an extremely unusual claim against the background of the insights of modern science. We expect the existence of any physical object, be it an elephant, a chair or an atom, to have an explanation. In the case of the elephant the explanation may be evolutionary and/or biological, in the case of the chair the explanation will probably include functionality and means of production, and in the case of an atom we expect a physical explanation. If so, it seems legitimate to demand an explanation also for the fact of the existence of the entire universe, even if we do not know in which theoretical framework such an explanation should be given. On the other hand, if the universe did not exist, there would be nothing that required an explanation (regardless of the fact that there was no one to require such an explanation either): every explanation is an explanation for something, and if there is nothing there is also nothing to explain.

Many believe that even if there is an explanation for the existence of the world, we are in principle prevented from discovering it: the astronomer Bernard Lovell, for example, believes that the formation of the universe in the Big Bang is beyond the possibility of human investigation; The astronomer Edward Tyron (Tyron) says that all that can be said about this is that our universe is one of those things that happen from time to time (what exactly does "from time to time" mean if nothing exists, including time?) and the 20th century scientist, author and humanist 1835, Julian Huxley, claimed that it is science that confronts us with the mystery of the existence of the universe, but science itself is not able to remove this mystery, and we must accept the fact of the universe being a basic mystery. It must be assumed that these pessimistic attitudes stem from the frustration that accompanies any attempt to deal with this unusual and difficult question. However, history shows that many predictions about things about which we claim that we will never be able to know them (or do them), will be wrong in the end, even when the reasons for these predictions sounded very convincing. This, for example, was the claim of the French philosopher Auguste Comte who said in XNUMX, before the science of spectroscopy had been invented, that we would never be able to know the chemical composition of the stars because they are beyond the scope of human investigation. Such claims are inherently based on the human knowledge and understanding available at the time they are asserted, but new discoveries and unique concepts open new horizons for chapters, and what was previously considered impossible often becomes possible and even self-evident. Therefore, even the fundamental question of metaphysics, despite the obstacles it currently poses to any attempt to deal with it, may find an answer to it when our understanding of the universe increases.

In contrast to the pessimistic positions we presented above, several attempts have also been made to offer different types of explanations for the fact of the existence of the world. Below we will examine these explanations, and try to see why it is still too early to be optimistic about the possibility of answering the darkest question in all of philosophy.

 

Naturalistic explanations

Although the question "Why is there anything at all?" It seems like a question that science should answer and not philosophy, few physicists dare to touch the subject. The astronomer Edward Tyron (Tyron) proposed the possibility that the world was created as a quantum oscillation of the vacuum, based on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which allows for the spontaneous creation of elementary particles, which immediately return and ionize (and are therefore called virtual particles). However, a quantum oscillation needs at least a minimal space-time, with defined physical properties, that allow such an oscillation (physicists call it a "simulated vacuum", because from a macroscopic point of view it behaves and looks like an absolute vacuum, but at the subatomic level it swarms with fields and particles). Therefore, even if such a theory offers a possible theoretical framework, it certainly does not provide an ultimate answer to the question, since it assumes the existence of something primordial.

However, most naturalistic positions (that is, those that align with the insights of modern science) tend to models of a universe that had no beginning (like Aristotle and Newton's position on the subject), and this on a principled basis. The contemporary physicist and philosopher Mario Bunge holds, for example, that the known laws of nature require that an explanation in terms of "previous" always be available. In this spirit, theories are occasionally put forward that allow for an endless chain of great compensations, and which change and are updated according to the new cosmological information that is received. Thus, for example, Quentin Smith proposes a universe that has no beginning and no end, where the singularity of a black hole can with a certain probability be the starting point of another universe, when our big bang also started from a singularity of a black hole in another universe. Another theory that corresponds to the concept of an eternal universe is that of the physicists Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle (Hartle), who proposed the possibility that our universe has a closed space-time, in which time is not infinite, but it also does not have a starting point, and thus it is contained within himself.

The problem with such physical theories is that they do not provide a definitive answer to the question. This is similar to trying to explain the formation of life through the theory that primordial life arrived on Earth from other places in the universe through meteorites that carried with them primitive life forms. Even if this theory is correct, it still does not explain how life was formed in the first place. Likewise, any theory based on the existence of an eternal universe is still required to answer the question of why the eternal universe exists as a whole. Smith himself admits that his theory can explain the existence of each and every universe, but not the fact of the existence of an infinite chain of universes. Every naturalistic explanation, Smith claims, has a stopping point, and therefore such an explanation is unable to give the ultimate answer to the question.

Necessity-based explanations

Many philosophers, who try to deal with the enormous difficulty involved in trying to answer the question, tend to choose a position based on one or another type of Necessities (Necessitarianism), that is, a position according to which the world necessarily exists. This is because modern science treats explanations based on necessity as sufficient explanations. It is the same in mathematical proofs as it is in physics: if a certain natural phenomenon (for example, the movement of celestial bodies) is derived from the fundamental laws of physics, this will be considered a full explanation of the phenomenon (although not the laws themselves). Below we will examine the main types of explanations based on necessity for the fact of the existence of the world, and we will try to claim that none of them "does the job":

theological imperatives. The claim that the world was created by a God whose existence is necessary, and that creation happened out of the necessity of His goodness or of His free will. Most arguments for the existence of God (as well as pure faith as a basic principle that does not require proof, or faith based on the Holy Scriptures) do not try to argue that the existence of God is necessary. These arguments claim to prove that God exists, but leave the question of whether his existence is necessary or contingent open. Although the existence of an omnipotent God may explain the existence of the world, if the existence of God is itself contingent (that is, God may not exist), then the question "Why is there anything at all?" You remain unanswered, and this is because God is also something. The only way to assume that the existence of God may coherently answer the fundamental question of metaphysics is to claim that God necessarily exists (and then it is possible that the world was created out of his goodness or his free will). The arguments belonging to this group are a priori arguments about the necessity of God's existence, and they are called ontological arguments. It is not our business to repeat these arguments, which have already been written about extensively. Since it is accepted that none of them is free from fallacies, and since modern science does not explain with the help of theology, then theological inevitability cannot fit as a modern answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics.

Nomological determinism.⁵ The claim that the world necessarily exists by virtue of a unique natural law (as opposed to the naturalistic explanations that are based on known natural laws). This is, for example, the position of Grünbaum, who believes that the beginning of the universe with a big bang is a physical law, and therefore the universe necessarily exists. However, this conception raises several difficulties: first, in the absence of a world (including space-time), there probably would not have been any laws of nature either, because the laws of nature need something to apply to it.

It would perhaps be possible to assume the existence of a law of nature that acts on empty space and creates from it the elements of matter and energy, but in the absence of space it is not clear what exactly the meaning of a law of nature is (what is a law of nature if there is no nature?) Also, since there is no justification to see the laws of nature Nature as necessary, after all, the law of nature is not a complete explanation for the fundamental question of metaphysics. If there was a law of nature that mandated the creation or eternal existence of the universe, there would still be room to ask why there is such a law, since the absence of the law was seen as a simpler possibility. In addition to that, since none of the known laws of physics (nor any combination of them) is able to explain the existence of the world, the claim that the world exists by virtue of a natural law means that the existence of another, unknown law must be assumed. However, modern science disapproves of ad hoc solutions, that is, of hypotheses that propose a new law of nature for the purpose of explaining only one phenomenon or event (the existence of the world or its formation). The trend is to integrate any physical phenomenon or event into a recognized theoretical framework, and to reduce the laws as much as possible. If the need arises to expand the theoretical framework or create a new one, it is done so that it includes as many phenomena as possible. There is no evidence of the existence of physical laws whose manifestations are reduced to one and only one event or one phenomenon only, so such a hypothesis is unusual and unjustified. And finally, the accepted scientific view is that it is impossible to derive specific phenomena or events based on laws (or general principles) alone. Not only gravity alone explains the meteor crash on the Earth, but also the specific position and speed of the meteor relative to the Earth before the collision. But the requirement for the existence of specific physical conditions for a natural law to allow the existence of the world prevents a priori an explanation based on such a law from being complete and satisfactory. If so, the laws of physics are not something transcendent to the world, which may help us in providing an answer to the fundamental question of metaphysics, and we are also forced to give up nomological determinism as a direction for a possible solution.

Analytical determinism. The claim that it is possible to show the necessity of the existence of the world through conceptual analysis (or through logic). Several attempts have been made in this direction, such as, for example, the attempt to show that the claim "nothing exists" is inconsistent with the fact of the existence of someone who claims it. Although intelligence that recognizes the existence of this or that reality is a necessary condition for presenting the question, the fact that the question was presented does not explain either the existence of intelligence or the existence of that reality. If we had fallen from the roof of a skyscraper and landed on the concrete floor at its foot unscathed, we would doubtless wonder how lucky we were. Although we had to stay alive to wonder about it, wondering itself was not enough to explain the miraculous event. Such conceptual analyzes are based on failures, and the prevailing position is that any attempt to explain the fact of the existence of the world through linguistic definitions (or on the basis of logic alone) is doomed to failure.

 

The egalitarian position: Metaphysics without discrimination

The essentialist positions try to show that the non-existence of the universe is not a possible state. In contrast, the egalitarian approach bases its arguments on the fact that non-existence is possible, but this possibility has no statistical priority over the possibility (or the various possibilities) of existence, and therefore the world exists not out of necessity but as one state among many (or at least some) that are statistically possible. Nozick, for example, claims that an inequitable theory, which assumes that a certain situation is more natural than another situation, cannot be fundamental because the question will always remain as to why a certain situation is more likely than another situation. The formulation of the fundamental question as "why is there something instead of nothing", says Nozick, assumes inequality (nothing is more likely than the existence of something); But the fact that every factor that leads to a deviation from nothingness is itself such a deviation, which also requires an explanation, will lead us to an infinite retreat in any attempt to answer the question from the premise of inequality. On the other hand, according to the egalitarian approach, there are many ways, perhaps even infinite ways, in which the world can be, but only one way in which the world can not be. Hence the chance that something will happen is significantly greater than the chance that there will be nothing. If there are indeed infinite ways in which the world can be, then the chance of the world not existing, which is only one possibility out of the infinite possibilities, is practically zero. Nozick claims that even if it would be more correct to treat all the ways the world can be as one category, and the nothingness as a second category, there is still a 0.5 chance of there being something, so that the existence of the world (in one way or another) has a statistical probability.

The main problem with the egalitarian position is that it tries to explain the existence of the world on the basis of the fact that this existence is possible. But it is impossible to answer the question "Why is there anything at all?" The answer is "because it is possible", because the question of why the existence of that something is even possible must be answered. What is it similar to? To try to answer the question "Why is there life?" In the following way: Since we know that there is life, there was a certain probability of its formation, but there was certainly also some chance that life would not have formed at all. Hence the answer to the question "Why is there life?" She: According to the egalitarian principle, each of these two options could be realized, and we were fortunate that of the two, the first one was realized. Furthermore, based on the egalitarian logic, it can be argued that there were in fact infinite possibilities for the formation of life (different species, for example), but there was only one possibility for its non-formation, and therefore the chance that life would not have been formed at all was zero. Of course, this explanation is not sufficient, because the question "Why is there life?" Aimed at some kind of theoretical framework that would explain how life is possible at all (we would equally protest if we answered the question "Why does it rain?" with the answer: "Because there was a certain chance that it would happen"). The answer "because it is statistically possible, and in this case it happened" cannot be used as a substitute for a theoretical framework, not in this context of the question of the formation of life, nor in the context of the question of the foundation.

teleological positions

A teleological explanation for an event or phenomenon is an explanation that includes a purpose. For example: I drank the water to quench my thirst; Predators have sharp fangs so they can kill their prey; We sweat to cool the body. In science, teleological explanations are accepted in the context of systems with a high degree of organization and complexity, such as, for example, biological systems, computerized mechanical systems (the robot slept as not to run into a wall) and even sociological systems, when the most common types of teleological explanation are psychological, ethological (that is, related to the science of animal behavior) and functional. Many scientists believe that teleological explanations can be superimposed on other explanations, for example, causal or evolutionary (we don't sweat כדי cool the body: sweating is caused by the temperature of the environment, and the evaporation of the sweat causes the body to cool; The survival advantage in the process resulted in the relative increase in the number of individuals with a sweating mechanism, which appeared for the first time due to a random process of mutations. However, the use of teleological language, even if it is understood as metaphorical, significantly simplifies explanations about the functioning of complex systems.

With the exception of theological teleological positions in relation to the fundamental question (that is, those that claim that God created the world for a certain purpose), the explanations belonging to this category are mostly value-based (axiological).⁶ These explanations offer, for example, the metaphysical principle that existence is better or closer to perfection than non-existence, and therefore the prevailing state is one of existence and not of non-existence. There are several problems with this position: First, even if we assume that existence is indeed better or more perfect than non-existence (something that is not at all self-evident), then the claim that the world is conducted in a way aimed at the realization of good values ​​is not compatible with the world we are familiar with, where not everything What should happen happens. Attributing values ​​to the world, and the perception of the world as realizing these values, already appear in the works of Pythagoras, Plato and Leibniz, but axiological concepts also appear in modern philosophy. Such a conception, for example, is that of John Leslie, a contemporary philosopher, who suggests that the world has a purpose: it exists to realize the good. The good exists "before" the world, perhaps as a Platonic idea. Another axiological conception sees consciousness as a value, and forms the basis of the teleological position known as the "strong anthropic principle": the laws of physics must be those that enable the development of consciousness, and the world exists for this purpose.

Although the debate about the legitimacy of teleological explanations in science and the possibility of placing them on top of other explanations continues to this day, such explanations are not used in the context of physical and chemical phenomena or events. And regarding axiological positions, we do not recognize anything in nature that works in this way: there is no law of nature based on "what is good - happens". Therefore, similar to theological positions, teleological explanations of various kinds for the existence of the world are not consistent with the concept of modern science, and do not constitute a fruitful direction in trying to answer the fundamental question of metaphysics.

Pessimism or cautious optimism?

We have seen, therefore, that the various attempts to answer the fundamental question of metaphysics "do not do the job": the necessary positions fail to establish the claim that the world necessarily exists; The naturalistic explanations are incomplete, and they are far from approaching a possible answer; The egalitarian position does not do explanatory work, and axiological teleological explanations are not consistent with the concepts of modern science. The failed history of these attempts to answer the question led, as mentioned, many thinkers to the pessimistic position regarding the possibility of answering it at all, a position that many scientists, who do not see a possible way to deal with it, adopt and justify.

However, as we have already mentioned, the history of scientific development and of human knowledge shows that many of the things that in the past were claimed (and quite convincingly) that we could never know or understand, are now well known and understood (until the emergence of the theory of evolution, no one believed that their existence could be explained of life in general, and the existence of the rational man in particular, not in a theological framework). Human knowledge does not stand still, and our understanding of the world is constantly growing. Therefore, it is possible that in the end we will also be able to answer the question "Why is there anything at all?" Despite all the fundamental difficulties arising from it.

Comments

¹ third. and. Leibniz, The New Method and Other Writings on the Theory of the Monds, translated by Yosef Or, Magnes Publishing, Jerusalem (1997), pp. 83-82.

² A. C. Brown, The Hash Question, Magnes Publishing House, Jerusalem (1984), p. 23.

³ Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, translated by Emmanuel Lotem, Ma'ariv Library, Tel Aviv (1989), p. 164.

⁴ third. and. Leibniz, The New Method and Other Writings on the Theory of the Coins, translated by Yosef Or, Magnes Publishing House (1997), Jerusalem, p. 60.

⁵ nomological - based on legality; In this context: on the laws of nature (from Greek: nomos - law)

6 axiological - belonging to the theory of values ​​(from Greek: axios - value)

The second part of the article, published in another issue of "Galileo", will be published here in a follow-up article

biography

Dr. Marius Cohen He teaches philosophy at Ben-Gurion University.

 

for further reading

Weinberg, Steven, Vision of the Sufi Theory, Ami Shamir (translator), Tel Aviv: Am Oved (1996).

Rundle, Bede. Why there is Something rather than Nothing, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2004).

Witherall, Arthur, The Problem of Existence, Aldershot: Ashgate (2002).

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