Well, Holt found an answer that was satisfying to him, although I remain skeptical. He starts with Derek Parfit's construct: that anything could have happened, but only one thing did, and how was that one thing selected as the winning reality? He then assumes two principles:
1) For every truth, there is an explanation of why it is true.
2) No truth explains itself.
Based on these assumptions, he rules out all but two possible operational principles. One, the principle of Simplicity, doesn't work, because the simplest reality would be the empty set, the one where nothing at all happened, and that is clearly not the reality we are experiencing. The other organizing principle could be Fullness. So, under this principle, the Universe would be both full and empty, both simple and complicated, both good and bad, etcetera-- which is exactly how we experience Reality! It's not uniformly fantastic, but it's not completely awful either. Holt goes on to look at the probabilities of a cosmos that was on an extreme versus one that sits in the middle of the spectrum, and from a logical and mathematical perspective concludes that from the organizing principle of Fullness, this reality was generated.
I think this is a whole lot of unacceptable assumption and still doesn't answer the Ultimate Question. Holt never really explains where the principle of Fullness came from, or what it had to work with to generate Reality. He himself must not be completely satisfied, because he does continue his quest and speak with John Updike, who is a theist and envisions God (unsurprisingly) as an author, who, becoming bored with nothingness, made the world "as a bit of light verse." Holt also details some personal experiences that only underscore the fact that whatever our theories about Life, the Universe, and Everything, we have to function in the material world every day as if it made sense....
So that's what happens in Dewey section 110-119. The big questions will no doubt continue through the 100's...
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Friday, December 19, 2014
The Explanatory Power of the Multiverse?
Previously: In Why Does the World Exist? Jim Holt is continuing to report on the different approaches to the question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" He speaks to scientists, philosophers and mathematicians, and finds both compelling aspects and holes in each perspective.
Holt moves to the multiverse model to present the idea that if "anything that can happen, will happen", then it is hardly surprising that the universe happened. Turns out there are multiple conceptions of the multiverse, which I will not review here, as the multiverse is an area of my special interest, and I have a lot of other ground to cover. However, although the multiverse addresses the "fine-tuning" issue (how does our universe just happen to have the right mathematics to support life?), it still doesn't really address the fundamental question: How did we get something from nothing?
Holt turns to mathematicians for their take. As fans of Neal Stephenson's Anathem know, there is a school of mathematics that believes that "mathematical forms indeed have an existence that is independent of the mind considering them" (Rene Thom, quoted on p. 173). Other mathematicians do not agree with this perspective and see their work as either describing things that they observe (applied math) or imagining other, logically consistent but perhaps physically impossible constructs (like the square root of -1-- this is "pure" math). Either way, there is a case to be made that our reality can be described strictly in terms of mathematical relationships between forces, in which case, it could be conceived as the product of an infinite mind, contemplating possibilities.
This is the theory subscribed to by John Leslie. If you think about Plato's cave again, then, if the shadows on the wall are our reality, and we are the people chained facing the wall, and the pure mathematical forms are the objects of which we only see the shadows, this infinite mind is the sun that casts the shadows. Then, of course, we are back to the God Hypothesis, but rather than an image of God forming things out of chaos and mud, we have the more 21st century image of Him creating them out of the matrix of His own mind. Is there much substantive difference between the two conceptions?
Derek Parfit, who is primarily a moral philosopher, has recently interested himself in this problem of origins, and his contribution is to start from the how and work into the why, considering all the possible realities including our own and asking ourselves what cosmic possibilities might be true. There could be nothing at all (but obviously there's not). There could be one universe or a lot of universes, and it or they could be designed or selected to be good, bad, or indifferent; simple or messy; similar or different; and so on. Perhaps all possible worlds exist, in which case ours, with all its flaws, requires no explanation. Just as some people have to live in North Korea and some people get to live in Hawaii, so some beings have to live in this entropy-driven universe and this fallen planet, while presumably somewhere beings are enjoying a more uniformly good existence, and some poor creatures are perhaps suffering an even worse one. But again, what drove all possible worlds to exist? I feel that we continually, contrary to one of Holt's earlier sources, run up against a wall with no door marked "NO EXPLANATIONS BEYOND THIS POINT."
Holt moves to the multiverse model to present the idea that if "anything that can happen, will happen", then it is hardly surprising that the universe happened. Turns out there are multiple conceptions of the multiverse, which I will not review here, as the multiverse is an area of my special interest, and I have a lot of other ground to cover. However, although the multiverse addresses the "fine-tuning" issue (how does our universe just happen to have the right mathematics to support life?), it still doesn't really address the fundamental question: How did we get something from nothing?
Holt turns to mathematicians for their take. As fans of Neal Stephenson's Anathem know, there is a school of mathematics that believes that "mathematical forms indeed have an existence that is independent of the mind considering them" (Rene Thom, quoted on p. 173). Other mathematicians do not agree with this perspective and see their work as either describing things that they observe (applied math) or imagining other, logically consistent but perhaps physically impossible constructs (like the square root of -1-- this is "pure" math). Either way, there is a case to be made that our reality can be described strictly in terms of mathematical relationships between forces, in which case, it could be conceived as the product of an infinite mind, contemplating possibilities.
This is the theory subscribed to by John Leslie. If you think about Plato's cave again, then, if the shadows on the wall are our reality, and we are the people chained facing the wall, and the pure mathematical forms are the objects of which we only see the shadows, this infinite mind is the sun that casts the shadows. Then, of course, we are back to the God Hypothesis, but rather than an image of God forming things out of chaos and mud, we have the more 21st century image of Him creating them out of the matrix of His own mind. Is there much substantive difference between the two conceptions?
Derek Parfit, who is primarily a moral philosopher, has recently interested himself in this problem of origins, and his contribution is to start from the how and work into the why, considering all the possible realities including our own and asking ourselves what cosmic possibilities might be true. There could be nothing at all (but obviously there's not). There could be one universe or a lot of universes, and it or they could be designed or selected to be good, bad, or indifferent; simple or messy; similar or different; and so on. Perhaps all possible worlds exist, in which case ours, with all its flaws, requires no explanation. Just as some people have to live in North Korea and some people get to live in Hawaii, so some beings have to live in this entropy-driven universe and this fallen planet, while presumably somewhere beings are enjoying a more uniformly good existence, and some poor creatures are perhaps suffering an even worse one. But again, what drove all possible worlds to exist? I feel that we continually, contrary to one of Holt's earlier sources, run up against a wall with no door marked "NO EXPLANATIONS BEYOND THIS POINT."
Monday, December 15, 2014
Still Watching People Try to Figure Out Why the World Exists!
Leibniz reasoned to the existence of God by postulating that the universe might not have existed, therefore requires an explanation for its existence, and, unless you are going to argue that it's "turtles all the way down," there's ultimately going to have to be some self-explanatory cause. This line of reasoning certainly does not provide an airtight proof for God's existence... it rather seems to point us back to Swinburne's assertion that God is the simplest explanation. David Deutsch contributes a further insight: "important explanatory advances often change the meaning of explanation." For example, we might conclude that the part of reality we can see is not representative of the whole, like those prisoners in Plato's cave I mentioned before, in which case, unless we can either get out of the cave or receive and understand information from outside it, our "explanations" are hardly worthy of the name.
Jim Holt introduces another important concept, related to the self-explanatory explanation, about halfway through the book: that of the self-subsuming principle. Robert Nozick, known primarily as a political philosopher, developed this concept. A self-subsuming principle is sort of the opposite of the paradox where a man comes up to you and says, "Watch out! Everyone in this town is a liar!" What are you supposed to do with that information, when it contains its own contradiction? On the other hand, if he said, "Good news! Everyone in this town tells the truth!" you would at least be free to believe his statement without cognitive dissonance. However, while that concept means that we can imagine explanations for the existence of the universe that are coherent, it gives us no way to be sure they are true. For example, if it is true that anything that can happen, will happen, then that statement happened, and everything has happened, including both nothing and all variations on the theme of nothing. Or maybe that's not how it went.
Einstein said the universe was eternal, and infamously adjusted his equations in light of that assumption. However, with the Big Bang looking more and more likely, scientists are speculating that quantum instability might have caused the Big Bang. After all, "changeless emptiness is incompatible with quantum mechanics." (p.141) Apparently, however, for reasons I still don't understand, this model is incompatible with gravity, thus necessitating the Theory of Everything that people are always on about. Furthermore, even if the conflict between quantum mechanics and relativity could be resolved, there's the question of where those two forces came from. If the universe is an unsurprising, indeed a predictable result of these laws, are they a transcendent reality? "Since the world is logically prior to the patterns within it, those internal patterns can't be called on to explain the existence of the world."
Now do you see why Swinburne finds the God Hypothesis the simplest, the most elegant, the most self-explanatory explanation for the existence of the universe?! The mind of God would be a great place for the laws of physics, quantum and relative, to reside, and His will would be a great catalyst for them to act.
Jim Holt introduces another important concept, related to the self-explanatory explanation, about halfway through the book: that of the self-subsuming principle. Robert Nozick, known primarily as a political philosopher, developed this concept. A self-subsuming principle is sort of the opposite of the paradox where a man comes up to you and says, "Watch out! Everyone in this town is a liar!" What are you supposed to do with that information, when it contains its own contradiction? On the other hand, if he said, "Good news! Everyone in this town tells the truth!" you would at least be free to believe his statement without cognitive dissonance. However, while that concept means that we can imagine explanations for the existence of the universe that are coherent, it gives us no way to be sure they are true. For example, if it is true that anything that can happen, will happen, then that statement happened, and everything has happened, including both nothing and all variations on the theme of nothing. Or maybe that's not how it went.
Einstein said the universe was eternal, and infamously adjusted his equations in light of that assumption. However, with the Big Bang looking more and more likely, scientists are speculating that quantum instability might have caused the Big Bang. After all, "changeless emptiness is incompatible with quantum mechanics." (p.141) Apparently, however, for reasons I still don't understand, this model is incompatible with gravity, thus necessitating the Theory of Everything that people are always on about. Furthermore, even if the conflict between quantum mechanics and relativity could be resolved, there's the question of where those two forces came from. If the universe is an unsurprising, indeed a predictable result of these laws, are they a transcendent reality? "Since the world is logically prior to the patterns within it, those internal patterns can't be called on to explain the existence of the world."
Now do you see why Swinburne finds the God Hypothesis the simplest, the most elegant, the most self-explanatory explanation for the existence of the universe?! The mind of God would be a great place for the laws of physics, quantum and relative, to reside, and His will would be a great catalyst for them to act.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Is God Necessary? (More about Why Does the World Exist?)
According to the book I am currently reading, Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt, Adolf Grunbaum says "Why is there something instead of nothing?" is the wrong question. He says that before the Big Bang there was no time, joining many earlier philosophers such as Leibniz who argued that time is a relation between events, so that if there are no events, there is no time. How this proves that, as it were, there is no such thing as Nothingness, I'm not quite clear, except that, well, if nothing happens in the forest, and no one is there to observe the lack of events, is it still a (non)happening? Grunbaum elucidates: if the Big Bang model is physically true-- if the creation of the Universe started with what is called a "singularity," that is, a one-off event that did not operate according to the same processes and principles that obtained afterwards-- then by definition that's all there ever was; time and matter came into existence at the same time, and it's impossible to speak of a 'before.' (Grunbaum thinks this disproves the existence of God, but I can't see why, since God by most definitions is outside time and space anyway.)
Richard Swinburne , on the other hand, advocates that God is, in fact, within time, that it is meaningful to say that God did one thing before another. He envisions God as "the right stopping point in explaining the world, the one that would minimize the part of reality that was left unexplained." (p. 104) He is willing to grant the conceivability of a reality that contained a universe but no God; he finds God to be not a necessary explanation, but the simplest explanation for the existence of everything else, and that there is no explanation necessary for His existence.
This, by the way, is my own position, more or less, although I find it easiest to conceptualize God as being outside time as we know it. He may have some kind of sequential experience of metachronology, how would I know, but He very obviously is not confined to the same history that we are, and so, for me, to say that he is "within time" is not very meaningful.
What a great book!
Richard Swinburne , on the other hand, advocates that God is, in fact, within time, that it is meaningful to say that God did one thing before another. He envisions God as "the right stopping point in explaining the world, the one that would minimize the part of reality that was left unexplained." (p. 104) He is willing to grant the conceivability of a reality that contained a universe but no God; he finds God to be not a necessary explanation, but the simplest explanation for the existence of everything else, and that there is no explanation necessary for His existence.
This, by the way, is my own position, more or less, although I find it easiest to conceptualize God as being outside time as we know it. He may have some kind of sequential experience of metachronology, how would I know, but He very obviously is not confined to the same history that we are, and so, for me, to say that he is "within time" is not very meaningful.
What a great book!
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
"Why is there something instead of nothing?" (Why Does the World Exist, by Jim Holt)
That is the central question of Why Does the World Exist, by Jim Holt. After surveying many possible answers, the first one he explores in depth is the theory that our world was manufactured somehow. He admits that this idea may not be different in any meaningful way from the God hypothesis, but in the process of explaining it, he does make an interesting point. If the creator wanted to leave any kind of instructions or message for his creation, one of his best bets would be to use mathematics-- to embed messages in the constants of nature. He also talks about mathematics itself as something that is not nothing but yet is not exactly something either. I hope he'll come back to these points.
The Greeks and most other ancients considered the world to have come about the same way the Bible says: by the organization of some preexisting mess. The word "cosmos" and the word "cosmetics" come from the same root, meaning an arrangement or an adornment. So the cosmos is that which is organized, and its opposite isn't the vacuum, but that which is disorganized. Many modern(ish) scientists, including Einstein, believed the opposite: that the universe was eternal and unchanging. Discovery of its expansion -- by a priest, no less-- put paid to this "because it's there" cosmogony. But if the Universe exploded into being out of nothing, what is nothing? In math, it's a powerful placeholder, but you can't get there from here: that is, if you have only 0, you can't get to 1. (Additional fun fact: if you have all the counting numbers, you can't just add them until you get to infinity, either. You can't get something from nothing, and you can't get infinity from the finite.)
So what is nothing? Holt distinguishes between "nothing," meaning "not anything," and thus NOT semantically a noun naming a substance, and "nothingness," which is both grammatically and semantically a noun denoting a possible reality. Or is it possible? It's certainly impossible to imagine, which doesn't mean it can't exist. If it exists, if there can be a state where there are no things, it is "as Leibniz was the first to point out, the simplest of all realities." (p.59) It is beautiful in symmetry and is not subject to entropy. So, did God make the universe out of Nothingness... or is there no such thing?
The Greeks and most other ancients considered the world to have come about the same way the Bible says: by the organization of some preexisting mess. The word "cosmos" and the word "cosmetics" come from the same root, meaning an arrangement or an adornment. So the cosmos is that which is organized, and its opposite isn't the vacuum, but that which is disorganized. Many modern(ish) scientists, including Einstein, believed the opposite: that the universe was eternal and unchanging. Discovery of its expansion -- by a priest, no less-- put paid to this "because it's there" cosmogony. But if the Universe exploded into being out of nothing, what is nothing? In math, it's a powerful placeholder, but you can't get there from here: that is, if you have only 0, you can't get to 1. (Additional fun fact: if you have all the counting numbers, you can't just add them until you get to infinity, either. You can't get something from nothing, and you can't get infinity from the finite.)
So what is nothing? Holt distinguishes between "nothing," meaning "not anything," and thus NOT semantically a noun naming a substance, and "nothingness," which is both grammatically and semantically a noun denoting a possible reality. Or is it possible? It's certainly impossible to imagine, which doesn't mean it can't exist. If it exists, if there can be a state where there are no things, it is "as Leibniz was the first to point out, the simplest of all realities." (p.59) It is beautiful in symmetry and is not subject to entropy. So, did God make the universe out of Nothingness... or is there no such thing?
110-119: Special Topics in General Philosophy
Dewey calls this sequence "Metaphysics." It includes some of the big words: beauty, time, evil, truth, and the ever-popular "Why?" In my local library, I found two items that looked like they might be interesting, as well as a surprising amount of, I don't know, dianetics and what-not. I picked up On Evil by Terry Eagleton, a Marxist literary analyst/ historian/ apologist for Liberation Theology. The book postulates that evil really exists. It criticizes the "product of circumstances" defence, the "expression of pure free will" argument, and the "born evil" accusation, which he calls just another form of determinism that would release the perpetrator from blame. It looks interesting enough and has the great virtue, after The Story of Philosophy, of being short. As insurance, I also brought home Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown: Time and Space, which has lots of pretty pictures and seems to be mainly about time travel, which is always good, and other speculative ideas. Then I went to the big library and ran into more short books with one-word titles like Truth and Beauty, but I think the winner is Why Does the World Exist, by Jim Holt, who writes for the New Yorker.
It's billed as "An Existential Detective Story" and seems to comprise an exploration of all the theories about not only the mechanics of creation but also the purpose, ranging from "there isn't one" to "God." I do feel the author made a strategic error in his introduction by blithely announcing that if you can accept a preexisting Creator you don't care about this issue. He thus disqualified a great many people, including me, from reading his book! But I don't think he's right. I think that even though I can accept a preexisting, purposeful Creator, it is interesting to consider both HOW and WHY He created. Furthermore, this book really is written in a highly readable narrative style that is a real blessing after The Story of Philosophy. But if the author is right and this book is not actually of interest to me, I can always learn about theories of time travel or the humanist perspective on evil.
It's billed as "An Existential Detective Story" and seems to comprise an exploration of all the theories about not only the mechanics of creation but also the purpose, ranging from "there isn't one" to "God." I do feel the author made a strategic error in his introduction by blithely announcing that if you can accept a preexisting Creator you don't care about this issue. He thus disqualified a great many people, including me, from reading his book! But I don't think he's right. I think that even though I can accept a preexisting, purposeful Creator, it is interesting to consider both HOW and WHY He created. Furthermore, this book really is written in a highly readable narrative style that is a real blessing after The Story of Philosophy. But if the author is right and this book is not actually of interest to me, I can always learn about theories of time travel or the humanist perspective on evil.
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