Siger of Brabant on Why Something Rather Than Nothing

London Ed offers this quick, over-breakfast but accurate as far as I can tell translation from the Latin (available at Ed's site):

For not every being has a cause of its being, nor does every question about being have a cause. For if it is asked why there is something in the natural world rather than nothing, speaking about the world of created things, it can be replied that there is a First immoveable Mover, and a first unchangeable cause. But if it is asked about the whole universe of beings why there is something there rather than nothing, it is not possible to give a cause, for it's the same to ask this as to ask why there is a God or not, and this does not have a cause. Hence not every question has a cause, nor even every being.

Ed comments, "I'm not sure how Siger's reply falls into the categories given by Bill."  Note first that the question that interests me is in the second of Siger's questions, the 'wide-open' question: not the question why there are created things, but the question why there is anything at all.   To that wide-open question Siger's response falls under Rejectionism in my typology of possible responses.  Siger rejects the question as unanswerable when he says, idiosyncratically to our ears, "it is not possible to give a cause," and "not every question has a cause."  That could be read as saying that not every interrogative form of words expresses a genuine question.

Ed also mentions Wittgenstein and suggests that he "had a go" at the Leibniz question.  I don't think so.  We must distinguish between 'Why is there anything at all?' as an explanation-seeking why-question and the same grammatically interrogative formulation as a mere expression of wonderment equivalent to 'Wittgenstein's "How extraordinary that anything should exist!"  Wittgenstein was not raising or trying to answer the former.  He was merely expressing wonder at the sheer existence of things.

I would be very surprised if someone can find in the history or philosophy, or out of his own head, a response to the wide-open explanation-seeking Leibniz question that cannot be booked under one of my rubrics.  (Credit where credit is due: my catalog post is highly derivative from the work of N. Rescher.)

Comments

[Edward Ockham]

Hello Bill. Wittgenstein also wrote a paper around the time he returned to philosophy in the late 1920s or early 1930s. I didn't have time (breakfast and all) to follow it up.

All the best, hope the weather in Arizona is better than the foulness here in the Wen.

[Bill Vallicella]

The summer is now upon us in the Sonoran desert. Everything bathed in lambent light.

Let me know if you find any other medieval anticipations of the Leibniz question.

[Edward Ockham]

I would be interested if you think there is a parallel with Wittgenstein's discussion which I quote here. He says "That there are facts is not something which can be expressed in a proposition". It's obviously contradictory - he first says (or implies) that "there are facts" is true, then says this fact cannot be expressed. I suppose it's one of those strange truths that we have to grasp by climbing the ladder then throwing it away.

As I understand him, there is a sort of linguistic scaffolding that we use to talk about the world. But we cannot talk about the scaffolding. That's an idea that runs through all of his philosophy.

It seems to me that there is a parallel with your earlier discussion about the two types of question. Given that there are facts, we can ask whether the corresponding propositions are true or not. But that is different from asking whether there are facts at all.

[Bill Vallicella]

Ed,

I think there is a parallel, one I will explore in a separate post.