Could there have been nothing at all?

I am of two minds.

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[Dmitri]

Hi Bill
I read the thought stimulating "Could there have been nothing at all?" post. The coda "encodes" our situation and, to me at least, every and any question is at play: "By personal decision? By mystical intuition? By acceptance of divine revelation? In some other way? In no way?"

The coda is short and thus silent about how not to go about deciding on this and other big questions. Not many people are bothered by them to begin with, but for those that genuinely are, it would be advantageous to explicitly reject bad decision making "aids" such as authority, coercion (hard and soft), irrationality (in its many forms from logical fallacious arguments through mindless group-think to coin tossing).

[BV]

Dmitri,

It would indeed be worthwhile to catalog the ways NOT to resolve the Big Questions.

But what I want to ask you is whether you feel the force of the original argument, the force of the rejoinder, and whether you too feel conflicted.

[BV]

I also want to ask you whether you understand my distinction between transcendental and ontological import. Don't just say Yes or No. Please explain what I am saying in your own words. The reason I ask is very few get this distinction.

[john doran]

The Null World (NW) - a world bereft of any and all existents - is not possible, given that there is something in the actual world (AW), namely us, asking the question.

In NW, by stipulation, there is nothing: no propositions, no numbers, but also no possibilities; no possible other ways that things might have been.

Therefore:

◇NW → ◻NW (by S5)

But:

~(◻NW)

Ergo:

~(◇NW)

But then it follows that:

□(∃x)(x exists)

The first rule of Null World? Don't whistle about Null World.

[BV]

>>◇NW → ◻NW (by S5)<<

I believe you are making a mistake here, John. The characteristic S5 axiom states that Poss p --> Nec Poss p. S5 includes S4, the characteristic axiom of which is Nec p --> Nec Nec p. What these axioms say, taken together, is that what's possible and necessary does not vary from possible world to possible world.

You cannot use S5 to validate the inference from *Possibly nothing exists* to *Necessarily, nothing exists.*

The rest of your reasoning, however, is correct.

It is certainly true that I actually exist, whence it follows that NW is not actual; but how is it supposed to follow that NW is not possible?

[john doran]

Put differently:

"Is it possible that nothing is possible?"

[Dmitri]

Hi Bill

I think that the set of problems you address in the posting are different. The questions with which you begin -- "Is it thinkable that there be nothing at all? And if it is, does it show that it is possible that there be nothing at all?" -- in my layman opinion have definite, in layman's terms, answers. Namely, it is thinkable that there is nothing rather than something. Thinking is not just picturing in the mind's eye, it is also reasoning and imagining. Possibility is a loaded concept, but if it is taken to mean, in this context, "conceivable" then the answer is yes, it is possible that there is nothing at all.

I share the uneasiness of oscillating between these two alternative visions: "On the one it is provable that necessarily something exists. On the other, it is not provable." But I tend to accept the latter more readily because the former presupposes what you call LF, and it is a strong assumption as the skeptic says.

Homework: A set of assumptions has transcendental import if it specifies conditions that, when true, jointly make a state of affairs of interest logically necessary to us. Ontological import is a property of a set of assumptions that, when true, jointly encode conditions that make a given state of affairs physically necessary without strong presuppositions about our cognitive structure.

[BV]

Dmitri:

>> it is thinkable that there is nothing rather than something. Thinking is not just picturing in the mind's eye, it is also reasoning and imagining. Possibility is a loaded concept, but if it is taken to mean, in this context, "conceivable" then the answer is yes, it is possible that there is nothing at all.<<

'Thinkable' and 'conceivable' are synonyms. The only difference is the latter term is Latin-based.

An item is thinkable iff I can single it out in thought, bring it before my mind, make it my intentional object. So a round square is thinkable. (If it weren't, how could anyone understand the sentence, 'There are no round squares'? But is it thinkable without apparent logical contradiction? No. So we must distinguish between 'thinkable' in the broad sense and in the narrow sense. I use it in the narrow sense:

An item (whether individual, state of affairs, whatever) is thinkable (i.e., conceivable) iff a person can bring it before his mind and in such a way that no contradiction appears to him. Is a floating bar of iron thinkable in this precise sense? Yes. Is is really possible? No. I have made this point many times. So" conceivability by minds of our constitution does not entail real possibility.

What I show in my first argument is that it is not really possibly that there be nothing at all.

[Dmitri]

Thanks for taking the time to explain the formal side of the first argument Bill. I think I understand, my repeated mentioning of "layman terms" meant to emphasize that what I say on the first argument is just that -- an informal take on it. Thinking requires an object, even thinking about nothing(-ness), and whether the object is a proposition or a mental representation or something else -- it does not formally matter for the validity of the argument. No object of thought, no thinking.

[BV]

Let me add an important methodological point. While in philosophy we must begin with ordinary language, we cannot remain there: we must 'precisify' and 'regiment' our use of terms if we expect to get anywhere. It is the same in every discipline: it cannot proceed without 'terms of art,' i.e. termini technici. When a mathematician uses 'function' he, qua mathematician, means something extremely precise by it, and if he is competent he can produce a precise definition in set-theoretical terms.

[Steve]

Hi Dr. Vallicella,

Is it possible that we have a confused notion of "nothing"? I know what is it for there to be nothing in my pocket, nothing in the room next door, or even nothing in her head. "Nothing" is contextual. But when we say "could there be nothing at all?", have made an abstraction from what only has sense concretely? Could it be that an abstract "nothing" is incoherent? I don't know.