Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Consul]

The noun "existence" has more than one meaning: It can be used to refer to an existent, to the totality (sum total) of existents, or to the property of existing. Correspondingly, "Existence exists" means either "The totality (sum total) of existents exists" or "The property of existing exists". The (mereological) sum total of all existents is an existent itself, so it is true in this sense that existence exists.

That's true. But "existence" is still dependent on the existence of particular things --- no particular existents, no "existence."

In set theory there is an empty set, but in mereology there is no empty sum; so there is no existence qua sum total of existents if there are no existents.

Whether existence is a (real) property is a contentious issue, so the truth-value of "Existence exists" in this sense depends on whether or not there is such a property as existing.

Yes. Most logicians since Frege and Russell (and even Aristotle) do not consider existence to be a "real" or "actual" property. It functions grammatically as one, however.

Yes, it's a real predicate that can be true of individuals; but I agree with those who think that if A exists, the truthmaker of "A exists" is nothing but A. That is, there is no additional state of affairs—A's existing—which includes a real property of existing. A alone makes it true that A exists.

[Consul]

Yes, ["existence" is] a real predicate that can be true of individuals; but I agree with those who think that if A exists, the truthmaker of "A exists" is nothing but A. That is, there is no additional state of affairs—A's existing—which includes a real property of existing. A alone makes it true that A exists.

"[F]or every truthmaker T, the truth <T exists> has T as its unique minimal truthmaker."

(Armstrong, D. M. Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. p. 23)

[Consul]

Here, I am discussing the act of creation from nothing. So there is a state of affairs that there is nothing (but God) and then there is a state of affairs that there is something. Could we please focus on this?

If there is "nothing but God" then there is not nothing; there is something. If you assume the universe was created, you're forced to some sort of creator. The question then is, whether this creator is a mystical, immaterial, insubstantial "presence" or just some earlier physical system.

Divine creation is a creatio ex nihilo in the sense that it doesn't consist in a transformation of some pre-existent matter or a construction out of some pre-existent elements. It's a supernatural, magical act of creation, so don't expect an explanation of it!

However, if divine creation is said to have resulted not only in the ex nihilo appearance of matter, energy, and space, but also of time, then a contradiction arises. For the concept of a timeless, non-time-involving act of creation is incoherent.

Moreover, modern physics gives us good reasons to believe that space and time are essentially connected and integrated into a unitary spacetime, such that space couldn't have been created separately from time, or vice versa.

Also, don't confuse a "created" universe with one that just spontaneously appears, from nothing. The latter offends our rational sensibilities, but can't be ruled out on logical grounds.

Yes, it can, because if there is no pre-existing matter or material substance (e.g. a primordial quantum field) equipped with certain active/creative powers that can manifest themselves spontaneously, nothing happens. Nothingness has no power to create something, to make something appear!
(What some physicists call "nothing" is actually something rather than nothing!)

[Bahman]

Bahman

First, what do you mean by time is a change-maker?

You've misunderstood me. I said this -

''So I think what needs to exist for change to happen isn't pre-existing time, it's the properties of the stuff of the universe (according to physics - forces acting on matter). When those properties manifest, change occurs. Change necessarily happens over a period time, but it's the change itself which manifests the temporal difference.''

Ie it is in the nature of the stuff of the universe (aka forces acting on matter) for change to occur. That change manifests temporally, and what we call time references and measures that change.

But I already argued that you cannot have change if there is no time. Moreover, we are discussing the act of creation from nothing.

Here is my argument for time: Time is a substance (by substance I mean that it exists and has some property) that allows changes. To show this, consider a change, from X to Y, where X and Y are two events. X and Y cannot lay at the same point since otherwise, they are simultaneous and there cannot be any change. This means that we at least need two points of a variable one comes after another in which X occurs at the earlier point and Y occurs at the later point. The distance between two points must be finite otherwise the change does not take place. This distance is nothing more than the duration between two events since one point comes after another one. This variable we call time.

OK, I follow your thinking, but the problem with Time as a substance with properties which allow change is that the only property it seems to have is 'allowing change'. I can envision that working in a way analogous to how the Higgs Field works (in which case Time ought to, theoretically at least, be detectable as a substance), but not in the way I think of dimensions. The way I think time as a dimension works is it is the product of natural processes, not the field in which natural processes occur. Time exists because change is in the nature of stuff which exists.

So do you disagree with my argument?

But any act deals with a change so it deals with a before and after. Events occur simultaneously if there is no before and after and that is problematic when it comes to the act of creation since everything exists and exists not at the same point.

Lets take the act of creation of the universe as instantaneously pinging into existence the stuff of the universe in an incredibly hot, dense point which has the energy to become everything our current universe is. My contention is it's the dynamic nature of that first substance, which by its nature changes, which brings about time. Without the change, there would be no time. Hence there is no 'before' the first change (the universe coming to exist) if it's the properties of the stuff of the universe which by their nature manifest temporal change. And if that original created stuff was static by nature, no temporal change would arise, time wouldn't exist.

If, however, time is an independently existing substance, it's presumably either -

- created simultaneously with the other stuff of the universe, which means there is no 'before the universe and no infinite regress.

- or the substance Time pre-existed the creation of the universe.

If you say the latter, then you have a 'before' the universe which could potentially stretch back into infinity as a substance with properties. And then the paradox of the universe's creation at a point in infinity arises. Your position is based on this yes? The logical impossibility that the substance time existed infinitely into the past with the universe coming into existence at some point in an infinite regress. I agree that by the standards of our human in-universe logic, that doesn't look logical.

But my concept of Time coming into being within the universe, as a result of the created stuff of the universe having dynamic properties, doesn't have to deal with the 'infinite time before' the universe was created.

Here, I am discussing the act of creation from nothing. So there is a state of affairs that there is nothing (but God) and then there is a state of affairs that there is something. Could we please focus on this?

I've explained the prob I have with your position, which remains, so I'll have to agree to disagree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huUp5wFfdcY

Do you disagree with my argument about time, which states time allows change to happen? If yes, what is your objection to it? What you stated so far is just your opinion rather than an objection.

I also could not watch the video. People in my country do not have access to youtube.

[Bahman]

Here, I am discussing the act of creation from nothing. So there is a state of affairs that there is nothing (but God) and then there is a state of affairs that there is something. Could we please focus on this?

If there is "nothing but God" then there is not nothing; there is something. If you assume the universe was created, you're forced to some sort of creator. The question then is, whether this creator is a mystical, immaterial, insubstantial "presence" or just some earlier physical system.

I am of course assuming that there is a God since I am talking about the act of creation and then showing that this assumption leads to a contradiction.

Also, don't confuse a "created" universe with one that just spontaneously appears, from nothing. The latter offends our rational sensibilities, but can't be ruled out on logical grounds.

I have a problem with the earlier rather than the latter. In fact, the latter is the only feasible option once the earlier is ruled out.

[Bahman]

These are just more assertions. You're not offering any arguments.

So, the act of creation does not deal with change!?

Here is the very first objection Aquinas addresses in the article I referred you to:

• Objection 1: And it seems that [creation is a change]. For change denotes the succession of one being after another, as stated in Physics 5, and this is true of creation, which is the production of being after non-being. Therefore, creation is a change.
• Reply to Objection 1: As stated above, the word "change" denotes the existence of one thing after another in connection with one same subject, but this is not the case in creation.
• (De Potentia Dei, Question 3, Article 2)

The "as stated above" refers to the body of Aquinas' response:

• "I answer that in every change there needs to be something common to both of its terms, because if the opposite terms of a change had nothing in common, it could not be defined as a transition from one thing to another. For change and transition signify that one same thing is otherwise now than before. Moreover, the very terms of a change are not incompatible except insofar as they are referred to one same thing, because two contraries if referred to different subjects can exist simultaneously.
  
  Accordingly, there is sometimes one actually existent common subject of both terms of a change, and then we have movement properly speaking, as occurs in alteration, increase and decrease, and local movement. In all such movements, the one subject, while actually remaining the same, is changed from one contrary to another.
  
  Sometimes again, we find that the one subject common to either terminus is not an actual but only a potential being, as is the case in simple generation and corruption. For the subject of the substantial form and of its privation is prime matter, which is not an actual being. Therefore, neither generation nor corruption are movements properly so called, but a kind of change.
  
  And sometimes, there is no common subject actually or potentially existent, but there is the one continuous time, in the first part of which we find the one contrary, and in the second part, the other; as when we say that this thing is made from that—that is, after that," as when we say, "from the morning comes noon." This, however, is a change not properly but metaphorically speaking, insofar as we imagine time as being the subject of those things that take place in time.
  
  Now in creation, there is nothing common in the ways above mentioned, for there is no common subject actually or potentially existent. Again, there is no continuous time, if we refer to the creation of the universe, since there was no time when there was no world. And yet, we may find a common but purely imaginary subject, insofar as we imagine one common time when there was no world and afterwards when the world had been brought into being. For even as outside the universe there is no real magnitude, we can nevertheless picture one to ourselves, so before the beginning of the world there was no time, and yet we can imagine one. Accordingly, creation is not in truth a change, but only in imagination, and not properly speaking, but metaphorically."

To me, there is a change when we go from one state of affairs to another state of affairs. In the case of creation, the first state of affairs is nothing and the second state of affairs is the universe. So I have to say that I disagree with Aquinas.

[Gertie]

BAHMAN

I am of course assuming that there is a God since I am talking about the act of creation and then showing that this assumption leads to a contradiction.

I didn't read the thread before I jumped in, only your first post, so I didn't realise you were setting up the Prime Mover Argument for God.  I was more interested in the paradoxes about time, and what it is. 

The Prime Mover argument of an uncaused first cause is a god of the gaps argument, which uses special pleading to solve those paradoxes. Basically it says that if there is an original uncaused cause of the universe, that solves the problem of our universe's infinite regress  vs creation from nothing, both of which look illogical.  

My prob with this argument, which I've already mentioned, is that our human concept of logic arises from our flawed and limited observations and understanding of how our existing observable universe works (which is itself a work in progress).  Including time and causation.  The mistake I see is to believe we can simply extrapolate from that logic to conditions (or lack thereof) outside our observable universe. When there's no reason to believe we can, and if we try to we run into such paradoxes. 

The concept of an uncaused cause itself also defies our human in-universe logic, just as much as creation ex nihilo or creation within an infinite regress.  To then simply call that logical impossibility ''god'' doesn't offer an explanation or argument for the logical possibility of its existence (it just adds extra baggage we associate with that label). So you've posited one logical impossibility to answer another, by creating an unknowable 'something' which is allowed to not logically exist. At which point you might as well just say that's the case with our universe, at least we have evidence that exists.

There really is nothing wrong with saying 'I don't know the origin of the universe' in such circs.

[GE Morton]

Also, don't confuse a "created" universe with one that just spontaneously appears, from nothing. The latter offends our rational sensibilities, but can't be ruled out on logical grounds.

I have a problem with the earlier rather than the latter. In fact, the latter is the only feasible option once the earlier is ruled out.
[/quote]

Well, there is a third option, i.e., that the universe was neither created nor sprang into existence spontaneously, but instead has always existed (in some form).

[GE Morton]

Also, don't confuse a "created" universe with one that just spontaneously appears, from nothing. The latter offends our rational sensibilities, but can't be ruled out on logical grounds.

Yes, it can, because if there is no pre-existing matter or material substance (e.g. a primordial quantum field) equipped with certain active/creative powers that can manifest themselves spontaneously, nothing happens. Nothingness has no power to create something, to make something appear!
(What some physicists call "nothing" is actually something rather than nothing!)

You're begging the question with, "Nothingness has no power to create something . . ."! A spontaneous appearance is not a creation; hence no power is needed. The idea offends our intellectual intuitions, especially the Kantian category of cause-and-effect, but it can't be ruled out, on either logical or empirical grounds. We can, of course, reject it on pragmatic grounds.

[Leontiskos]

You're begging the question with, "Nothingness has no power to create something . . ."! A spontaneous appearance is not a creation; hence no power is needed. The idea offends our intellectual intuitions, especially the Kantian category of cause-and-effect, but it can't be ruled out, on either logical or empirical grounds. We can, of course, reject it on pragmatic grounds.

Then "cause", not "create".

[GE Morton]

You're begging the question with, "Nothingness has no power to create something . . ."! A spontaneous appearance is not a creation; hence no power is needed. The idea offends our intellectual intuitions, especially the Kantian category of cause-and-effect, but it can't be ruled out, on either logical or empirical grounds. We can, of course, reject it on pragmatic grounds.

Then "cause", not "create".

Doesn't matter. Creation is a type of causation. We can't rule out causeless ("truly random") events, on either logical or empirical grounds.

[Leontiskos]

You're begging the question with, "Nothingness has no power to create something . . ."! A spontaneous appearance is not a creation; hence no power is needed. The idea offends our intellectual intuitions, especially the Kantian category of cause-and-effect, but it can't be ruled out, on either logical or empirical grounds. We can, of course, reject it on pragmatic grounds.

Then "cause", not "create".

Doesn't matter. Creation is a type of causation.

It does matter, for you focused specifically on creation and what is true of the species is not necessarily true of the genus. "Creation is a type of causation" is an invalid argument to support the claim that where creation is not possible, causation is also not possible.

We can't rule out causeless ("truly random") events, on either logical or empirical grounds.

...and this is where the unprincipled rejection of metaphysics becomes particularly absurd. But I'll leave you to it.

[GE Morton]

It does matter, for you focused specifically on creation and what is true of the species is not necessarily true of the genus. "Creation is a type of causation" is an invalid argument to support the claim that where creation is not possible, causation is also not possible.

I focused on creation because that was the topic of the thread. But the argument applies to causation of any kind.

We can't rule out causeless ("truly random") events, on either logical or empirical grounds.

...and this is where the unprincipled rejection of metaphysics becomes particularly absurd. But I'll leave you to it.

Care to elaborate on that "absurdity"?

[Consul]

Yes, it can, because if there is no pre-existing matter or material substance (e.g. a primordial quantum field) equipped with certain active/creative powers that can manifest themselves spontaneously, nothing happens. Nothingness has no power to create something, to make something appear!
(What some physicists call "nothing" is actually something rather than nothing!)

You're begging the question with, "Nothingness has no power to create something . . ."! A spontaneous appearance is not a creation; hence no power is needed. The idea offends our intellectual intuitions, especially the Kantian category of cause-and-effect, but it can't be ruled out, on either logical or empirical grounds. We can, of course, reject it on pragmatic grounds.

No, there is no question-begging, especially as it is clearly incoherent to say "At first there was nothing, and then something suddenly appeared out of/emerged from nothing without any cause or ground". For this presupposes a pre-existing temporal framework, which is something rather than nothing, and also that there being nothing is a possible state of affairs that can obtain before the state of affairs of there being something begins to obtain. But nothingness qua reified absolute negation, i.e. as a purely negative state of affairs whose essence consists in the absence of everything positive, is impossible in principle.

Even if we talk about uncaused appearances or emergences of things within the existing universe, they would be sheer miracles if they weren't grounded in spontaneous manifestations of pre-existing potentialities inherent in the universe.

[GE Morton]

You're begging the question with, "Nothingness has no power to create something . . ."! A spontaneous appearance is not a creation; hence no power is needed. The idea offends our intellectual intuitions, especially the Kantian category of cause-and-effect, but it can't be ruled out, on either logical or empirical grounds. We can, of course, reject it on pragmatic grounds.

No, there is no question-begging, especially as it is clearly incoherent to say "At first there was nothing, and then something suddenly appeared out of/emerged from nothing without any cause or ground".

No, it is not incoherent. The proposition is perfectly intelligible; there is no difficulty making sense of it. The difficulty comes with explaining and accepting what it asserts. Such an event is inexplicable, and thus intellectually repugnant. But we can't dismiss it on logical grounds; only on pragmatic ones. That is true of all of Kant's categories. We accept them a priori, not because they're self-evident or logically necessary, but because we can't explain anything without them.

For this presupposes a pre-existing temporal framework, which is something rather than nothing, and also that there being nothing is a possible state of affairs that can obtain before the state of affairs of there being something begins to obtain.

Nope. There is no such presupposition, no framework of any kind. Nothing means nothing --- there is no "pre-existing state of affairs." No time and no space. You're again begging the question, insisting upon cause and effect. We can only begin to speak of time, of "before" and "after," once the universe comes into existence.

But nothingness qua reified absolute negation, i.e. as a purely negative state of affairs whose essence consists in the absence of everything positive, is impossible in principle.

Per what principle? Cause and effect?

Even if we talk about uncaused appearances or emergences of things within the existing universe, they would be sheer miracles if they weren't grounded in spontaneous manifestations of pre-existing potentialities inherent in the universe.

Yes, it would be fair to call such events miracles. But we can't rule out miracles on logical grounds, only on pragmatic ones.