Talk:Can something come from nothing?

Dan Polansky

Some initial thoughts, perhaps to be used in the debate later.

The questions is: can something come from nothing?

1) We do not know whether the human brain is capable of answering such questions. The evolved mammalian brain is designed above all to address questions that, upon first approximation, are conducive to survival and reproduction, and more accurately, are conducive to replication of the genes. This kind of question does not seem to fall within that. This does not mean that human brain cannot possibly happen to be able to; it means that we do not really know.

2) The key relation here is "come from", probably in the sense of "causally originate". This relation can work reasonably well on the human scale in the human context of the planet Earth. But it is quite possible that at the beginning of the universe, this relation breaks down/ceases to work, or put more accurately, does not work/emerge yet.

3) Can numbers, which are immutable abstract objects, come from nothing? Well, they do not come at all; they are just there (if one is Platonist in that sense).

4) About "Logically, it should be impossible for something to come from nothing or something to disappear into nothing": nothing logical about that. Let us consider a painting, a physical one (not a digital image). The painting burns/turns into ashes. The patterns that were in the painting are now just gone. The matter that the painting consisted of is not gone, but the painting (which is not only matter but also its particular organization) is gone. This is significant since something refers not to just matter but also to material objects and their patterns, and material objects are not matter; they are from matter. There is not just matter in the empirical world; there are mountains, valleys, burning fires, storms, flocks, conversations, chessboard configurations, etc.

5) Expanding on item 1): it may be an arrogance of reason to think it can analyze everything, including things that happen in extreme conditions or situations. It is naive to expect our innate intuitions to work well everywhere. It is a platitude to say that Einsteinian physics and quantum mechanics are highly counter-intuitive (I for one find some of the tenets of quantum mechanics absurd). To use innate intuitions and apply them to questions concerning the boundary between existence and non-existence seems like hubris. We may try, but we should be wary that unless we are lucky, we may easily end up talking sheer nonsense.

--Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:14, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

It would be good if you shortened and rephrased these as arguments and added them. Re your first point also see here. Prototyperspective (discuss • contribs) 10:22, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

I do realize this is too discursive and long for the debate itself, hence the talk page. I will see whether I want to place a reformulation of it to the debate (the kind of editing that bears more responsibility). --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:25, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your points! I think number 4) is a very interesting idea to think about. For example, what defines a person? Does a person emerge from nothing, or do they originate from something else? (It also relates to your analysis of identity.) You could say that I am no longer the same person I was 10 years ago. Both my body has completely renewed itself (practically almost all cells have broken down, brought out of my body and have been rebuilt) and my personality has developed as well (my old behavior, beliefs, facial expressions, etc. are no more). Am I then emerged from nothing, since the structure is indeed completely new and would never have emerged that way before? And then you could also think about this: If my hair is cut off, whose hair is it then? Is it still a part of me, or are those hairs lost from my body and therefore gone? If I create an original painting that no one has ever painted before, did it then also come from nothing? And what about my thoughts about the painting before I painted it? Did they also come from nothing, or do they come from somewhere? (Plato, by the way, would have said that it is a recollection that you retrieve (anamnesis).) All in all, it depends on how you interpret the question. I meant it more in the sense of: Can a certain event occur without a prior event happening? In other words, can something have a consequence without a cause? Those are interesting questions to think about! S. Perquin (discuss • contribs) 11:02, 26 July 2024 (UTC)