Discourse, debates and exchange in the spirit of a "free and public enquiry"... among the olives

The September Philosophic Encounter

Continued from page 1

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Parmenides' answer may not be the right one - that things have always existed and that nothing changes - but the Parmenidean method must certainly be the right method of enquiry. It is a reason based method that even takes account of, and considers important, unreasoning methods themselves. It holds unreason to be worth knowing, not for the purpose of knowing how to circumvent it, but in order to know how to encourage the unreasoning to, how shall we put it, reason.

So it is that Parmenides in his poem calls the two ways of enquiry the path of knowledge and the path of opinion and says that the path of knowing will necessarily "know of" the path of opinion. This seems to be common sense, since anyone who holds opinions only, by definition, does not have knowledge. But anyone who has knowledge knows about any possible opinions the opinionated could hold. The ignorant think that lightening is caused by angry gods. The enlightened, who know that it is caused by electrical activity, know that the ignorant think this and they call it an opinion; and they are qualified to call it an opinion because they know the truth about lightening. Otherwise they could never declare what the ignorant know to be only opinion. What is more, the so called enlightened could never declare the ignorant to be ignorant (with the best possible intentions no doubt).

This is the fundamental worth of Parmenides poem and work and not his conclusion (though we may discover otherwise). It is, in fact, critical, evidence based thinking by another name. It is scientifically informed, philosophical enquiry.

Who did it?
This is why it is crucial - and by the looks of things in the world, ever more so crucial - to consider seriously this question of why something exists rather than nothing. Giving an answer to this question, or not giving an answer to this question, paves the ground with a fundamental bedrock on which everything else in human society is built. Let's not forget either, that whoever it is who gets to do the paving usually does the building. If it is religion, with its neat, in-a-nutshell response of "its god who done it" then we have to accept everything else that religion decrees is true or worthy. These range from banalities such as diet and going to church on Sunday to serious issues like gender and racial superiority, controls on sex and calls to slay the heathen folk. This is not conjecture; it is what religion has actually been observed to lead to.

In contrast, till date, there doesn't seem to be one instance in history where people have gone to war over science or philosophy, for example, or over atheism, as another example. (Which gives a real clue as to why religion often leads to violence and bloodshed: it seems to be the only belief system that offers the believer the opportunity to dress up his or her (but mainly his) agenda as being that of an external, unquestionable, irrefutable intelligence. In other words, religious systems are an excellent way to unfairly preponderate over others. What's a fairness-based way? Well, one which takes account of the facts as we observe them to be.)

If, on the other hand, evidence based and/or rational enquiries get to pave the ground, then it will follow that most probably society will be constructed on reason, all the way to the bottom.

There are two possible alternative evidence/reason based answers to the question "who done it?" That is, who or what caused something to exist rather than nothing, and both of these are the antithesis of religious answers.

One is that things have always existed but that there is no reason for them to exist; and that, as they say, is that. Which is a bit of a cop out, though it does have the merit of not leading to calls to slay heathen "unbelievers". According to this thinking we can, apparently, still get on just as well if we are not bothered by why anything exists and just accept that they do. This is of course Parmenides' own response to the question, though one might well imagine that he was not a lazy atheist and would have probably given much thought to how this reasoning might influence society [1].

The other is an answer which science seems to be closing in on in the distance, and which philosophy may have to help along for the last few miles of the journey. Whatever caused the universe and anything to exist, says science, must be part of the universe, or whatever it is that exists entirely. And science, eventually, might be able to come up with an answer as to what that cause is, (usually referred to as a TOE or Theory Of Everything).

However, as to why that cause itself exists - why there should be a cause and why anything should happen rather than nothing happening - that may be a problem that science cannot solve and it will be left to philosophy to find a suitable end point to the enquiry, or at least tie up the ends without feeling that we have left anything undone in the effort to understand.

But science does make attempts, and it might be that cosmologist Stephen Hawkin will turn out to be right when he suggests that the universe exists because an equation which describes the universe exists, and is so compelling that it causes itself to be realised (That is, its realisation is none other than the existence of a universe). If such an equation is shown to be possible, that gives us an evidence-based cause as to how the universe comes to exist. Fine, but it still leaves us with the problem of why the equation itself should be. In that case, philosophy might be the only hope for positing a satisfactory response to the question "why does the equation exist?" that answer being (possibly), why not ?

But that may not be a very easy answer to defend and more than likely it will be a combination of scientific thinking and logical reasoning that is going to bring us to a theory that has greatest probability of being true. It may not be possible to find a definitively certain answer as to why something exists rather than nothing, but it may be possible to assemble a number of theories - probably some of them quite weird - about which we can assess the probable truth of each. In the end we might decide that the theory that makes most use of science; makes greatest appeal to reason - via tools such as logic and probability; and which also, perhaps, appeals to any hunches we have, will be the most likely contender for probable truth about this question [2].

Whatever theories interested people come up with, one result is certain. It will not be a waste of time and, contrary to the idea that this is a dry and mirthless topic, it will probably be discovered that once smitten by it, and once the benefits to one's capacities of critical thought are felt, it will be difficult to prevent oneself appearing too enthusiastic about it (though, however, it is recommended that one at least try). After all, why in heaven or on earth does something exist rather than nothing? Some grand purpose, or no purpose at all? [3]

[1] Nestor Cordero points out that Parmenides was purely interested in presenting a reason based account of his philosophical enquiry and simply uses the imagery of a goddess in his poem and other Homeric type literary devices to capture the attention of the reader of the time. "Parmenides wants to interest (and be understood by) the widest possible public" (Nestor Cordero, By Being It Is, 2004, 14). And "Once he has taken the Goddess's message, he will judge by "reasoning" the arguments he has just heard [fr.7.5]" (24). Though the poem is in the epic style of the Greek poets of mythology, Parmenides, as a philosopher, nevertheless encourages reason and eschews any other authority (apart from, we can be sure, empirical evidence, which is a crucial support for any reason based idea in general).

[2] For an excellent discussion about the validity of "hunches" as a method of ascertaining probability of truth, see Quinten Smith Time Was Created by a Timeless Point: An Atheist Explanation of Space-time , published in: Gegansall and Woodruff (eds.), God and Time . New York . Oxford University Press. For full article visit https://ezurl.eu/qs

[3] It's worth noting that the question "why does something exist rather than nothing?" may not even be a well-formed question, and is in fact a "non-starter", since it assumes that the natural state of reality is that nothing should exist. This apparent error of assumption was made by Leibniz when he took on the issue in his 1714 essay "Principles of Nature and of Grace Founded on Reason" in which he implicitly assumes that whatever exists would not in fact exist if it were not for an efficient cause that provides the sufficient reason for it to exist. In fact, on deeper reflection, that which we hope to enter into during the week at the Parmenideum, is that a state of affairs in which nothing exists is very likely logically incoherent and physically impossible. That is, Parmenides was probably right: things have always and will always exist. However, if that explanation is accepted, then we still have to ask why that is the case!. For a rigorous discussion of this issue and also of Leibniz's discussion of it, see Adolf Grunbaum, The Poverty of Theistic Cosmology, Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 55 (2004), 561-614.