Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

Exploring the fundamental question in the philosophy

Why is there something rather than nothing? This seemingly simple question has inspired endless speculation by philosophers, and has especially begotten heated debate between theists and atheists. It is one of the first questions we ask in philosophy and presents us with the deep mystery of existence. I want to take some time exploring this question to see whether we can can come up with a coherent or satisfactory answer, or even whether the question is answerable in principle. But first, let’s explore the principle upon which this question is based, and ask ourselves whether it is valid in the first place. Let’s dive in!

The Principle of Sufficient Reason

When we ask “why”, we are usually doing so because we assume that there is an intelligible answer on the other side of our question. In fact, the entire scientific enterprise is based on the assumption that there are explanations for observable phenomena. Similarly, much of philosophy relies on the principle that the “why” question is a valid one. This assumption is often rooted in a logical axiom known as the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). Throughout the history of philosophy this principle has been defined in various ways, but could be simply understood as:

• The principle that everything that exists or occurs has an explanation, reason, or ground.

This may seem very reasonable at first, and without it, we risk undermining the entire enterprise of philosophy and science. At some point however, one has to stop explaining things in terms of other things. There must be a logical bedrock, a first principle, a necessary fact. There must be something that cannot be explained by anything other than itself. Many theists will now jump in and say “Aha! This is why God must exist”, but I don’t think this is the “gotcha” that they think it is (I say this as a theist myself). Although I agree that all contingent things require an explanation, and said explanations must bottom out in at least one fact/thing that is necessary, this does not entail the existence of a God per se.

This is because I believe that when one speaks about God as necessary, they are really positing him as a brute fact. Now, before I go on, I must say that there is much controversy about what a brute fact even is, and whether necessary things are counted in such a definition, however, I am going to define brute facts as:

• Facts that have no extrinsic explanation.

This mean that a brute fact and a necessary one are at the very least, functionally equivalent, if not semantically identical. Usually, the theist will pipe up and saying that God is not a brute fact because God explains himself. At least in classical theism, God’s essence is understood to be identical with his existence. However, this strikes me a simply tautological. To say that God is necessary is to say nothing at all. Whatever exists as the ontological bedrock, in which all other contingent things ground their existence, is necessary by definition. Necessity and bruteness are thus one and the same. To see why I think this is the case, it may now be helpful to move onto an analysis of the concept of nothingness, and hopefully along the way, the above statement will become obvious.

Nothing: An Incoherent Concept?

The immediate difficulty with the question is that it begins with a concept that may itself be incoherent, or at least impossible to conceive by the human mind; nothingness. We can’t really conceive of true nothing. When we attempt to do so, we end up imagining something more like empty space. “Nothing soup” one might say. But this isn’t nothing- it is still a thing. True nothingness is the lack of anything whatsoever, which goes against every experience we have a humans. Existence is possibly the only shared property of literally everything we encounter. Thus, maximal absence, or non-existence, is simply impossible to speak of without reification. As soon as we assign properties to nothing, we have spoken it into something.

It is therefore incredibly difficult, maybe even impossible, to analyse the concept we are attempting discuss. Much like how the question “what occurred before the big bang?” is incoherent, because time began at the big bang, it may be equally incoherent to ask why there is something rather than nothing. Simply because one adds the word “why” before a string of words, does not guarantee that the resulting sentence contains any discernible meaning. As soon as we start to talk about nothing as if it is a “thing” out of which something can arise, we are making a category error. This is the same mistake Lawrence Krauss made in his book ‘A Universe From Nothing’, and I fear my friend Alex - Left Brain Mystic is doing the same in his recent work on the topic.

I worry then that the question we are attempting to answer may be, in principle, unanswerable. However, just because something is inconceivable by limited human minds, does not mean it is therefore logically impossible. What is logically incoherent by my lights however, is the idea that something could arise out of nothing- as in, true nothingness.¹ This is exactly the same way in which I believe it is impossible for consciousness to arise out of unconscious matter, or for life to arise out of a dead universe.² I do not believe that two entirely ontologically distinct realms can even interact, no matter for one to magically produce the other. Given then, that something definitely exists, it seems that nothingness is actually impossible, both logically, and metaphysically.

A Necessary Reality

What this seems to entail then, is there must be some unexplained reality that can account for all other facts. For me, this is God by definition, but one can call it whatever one is comfortable with. The benefit of theism over purely naturalistic accounts, lies not in theism’s ability to escape PSR, but because it offers one brute fact, rather than any greater number of them. The fact of the matter is, everyone’s theory is going to have some brute facts. Following the axiom of parsimony however, one should ensure that their theory has as few as is possible. Therefore, contingency arguments for God’s existence, whilst pointing towards something true, are not altogether successful. Rather, they should narrow our search for a “good” brute fact.

Of course, it could be the case that the entire “system” is itself necessary, as Spinoza thought, but this would seem to rub against our intuitions. It is certainly conceivable that some particular fact about reality, like my existence for example, could have been otherwise. Although I don’t think that conceivability is enough to entail metaphysical possibility, nor do I put much stock into modal reasoning, it nonetheless remains a more parsimonious theory if everything is reducible to one principle. In my own metaphysical system, everything is reducible to, or can be grounded in, the same field of consciousness. It is not that particular things are distinct from said field, and therefore in need of an extrinsic being in order to explain it’s existence, but that all contingent things arise out of one necessary principle.

Conclusion

To attempt to bring together this wondering tangential stream of consciousness, we can conclude the following from the above:

1. PSR is a good heuristic, but cannot be absolutely true in all cases.

2. Brute facts and necessary facts are functionally identical.

3. Nothingness is a metaphysical impossibility.

4. The best metaphysical theories contain only one brute fact.

So, not controversial at all, right? Cool, glad we agree xD

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1. For those wondering how I interpret the idea of creation ex nihilio in the Christian story, I’d point them towards the work of David Bentley Hart and others, who demonstrate quite persuasively that the above doctrine entails something like creation ex deus.

2. This can be expressed as the following logical axiom: Y cannot arise out of X if X does not contain that which constitutes Y in some way, either in potential or actuality.