Philosophy Paper: Urgent
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lectures_1stchoice.zipLecture 2.pdf
The Meaning of Life Lecture 2
Why Is there something rather than nothing?
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Why is there something rather than nothing?
Not an age-old question.
First asked by Leibniz in 1714:
“'Why is there something rather than nothing?'[...] Assuming that things must exist, it must be possible to give a reason why they should exist as they do and not otherwise.”
(Leibniz, The Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason, 1714)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1646- 1716 2
Understanding the question The Primordial Existential Question
There could have been a state of affairs such that there was nothing at all (and no one to even think this).
But that is not the current state of affairs.
Why? Why is there something? Why does the world exist?
Unlike any other question: its scope is total. It doesn’t ask why this or that exists rather than nothing. It asks why there is anything at all.
Its scope includes every existent being (including perhaps God).
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Leibniz’s answer
Based on Aquinas’s argument from contingency (five ways).
Distinction between contingent and necessary beings:
Contingent being = something whose non-existence is possible and conceivable; something that may or may not exist; something whose existence is dependent on other things. Examples: life on Earth, yourself.
Necessary being = something whose non-existence is impossible and inconceivable; something which may not fail to exist; something which does not need anything else to exist.
According to Leibniz, all things in the world are contingent beings, but God alone is a necessary being. 4
Leibniz’s answer
The sufficient reason, therefore, which needs not further reason, must be outside of this series of contingent things and is found in a substance which...is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself; otherwise we should not yet have a sufficient reason with which to stop. This final reason for things is called God."
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Leibniz’s God The creator and the ruler of the world
Necessary being = being whose non-existence is inconceivable
Bears the reason for its existence within itself
"Besides the World, that is, besides the aggregate of finite things, there is some dominant unit...[that] not only rules the world, [but] also makes or creates it. It is superior to the world and, so to speak, beyond the world, and is therefore the ultimate reason for things.
(Leibniz, On the Ultimate Origination of the Universe, 1697)
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Problem with Leibniz’s answer
Why can’t the world itself bear the reason for its existence within itself (be necessary)?
Sure, any given being in the world is contingent.
But what if the collection of all these contingent beings (the world as a whole) is not itself contingent?
What if the world, although consisting only of contingent beings, is not itself contingent, but necessary?
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Problem with Leibniz’s answer
I roll a die. Rolling a 6 is contingent. So is rolling a 5, a 4, a 3, a 2, or a 1.
But rolling a 6 or a 5 or a 4 or 3 or a 2 or a 1 is not.
If I roll a die, it is necessary that I roll one of the faces, although which particular face I roll is contingent.
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The world as necessary being
If the world as a whole is a necessary being, then one need not invoke God to explain why there is something rather than nothing; the world itself would be its own reason.
Therefore, if the world as a whole is a necessary being, the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” becomes no more meaningful than the question “Why are bachelors unmarried rather than married?”.
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Is the world necessary being?
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There is some physical evidence that the total energy of the Universe is 0.
This means that the Universe is a kind of nothing (the positive energy of matter is balanced evenly by the negative energy of gravity).
Matter creates itself spontaneously out of nothing through a process of quantum vacuum fluctuations.
Lecture here: https://goo.gl/zivS7u
Video here (minute 2:37-4:00) https://goo.gl/X2y2Xg
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Questioning the question
The question of why is there something rather than nothing has hidden philosophical presuppositions:
1) That there could have been nothing (in the sense that all existent things could have been absent, not that there could have been a thing called “nothing”).
2) That there must be some explanation for the existence of the world (Universe/ Being).
If any of these presuppositions is false, then the question why is there something rather than nothing is rendered illegitimate or even meaningless.
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Hidden presupposition 1 1. There could have been nothing.
Could there have been nothing at all?
The Subtraction Argument: Start with the world as it is. Mentally remove every single thing in it, one by one. After all things have been removed, remove space and time, abstracta. End up with nothing. There could have been that!
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Hidden presupposition 1
Objection: you can remove all things, space, time, etc., but you cannot remove the stage/framework from which you had subtracted all things.
Therefore, there couldn’t have been nothing. There being nothing is not a real option! There being something is the only alternative!
As a result, the question must be dismissed as illegitimate, even meaningless.
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Hidden presupposition 2 2) There must be some explanation for the existence of the world.
What explanation could there be? What could count as an explanation?
If there were an explanation for the existence of the world, then that explanation would have to cite other existent things. (for one explains something that exists by reference to something else that exists).
But those things mentioned in the explanation would also be part of what needs explaining! For the question asks why there is anything at all (and this includes the things mentioned by your explanation).
If what needs explaining includes everything that exists, there remains nothing that could do the explanation.
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The question is in principle unanswerable
To explain existence, one would have to refer to some existent thing which is outside existence and explains it, which is contradictory.
To explain existence, one would have to go beyond existence, which is impossible.
It is like asking: “What is north of the North pole?”
So there cannot be an explanation in principle. The nature of the question itself makes it impossible in principle to formulate an answer to it.
The question is in principle unanswerable. Existence does not admit of an explanation in principle.
Any answer will be a non-answer! So the question of why is there something rather than nothing is in principle unanswerable.
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The question is a pseudo-question Since the question is in principle unanswerable, in fact it is not a question. It is a pseudo-question.
It’s like asking “What is north of the North Pole?”
Nothing could answer it. It is a bad question, it is misleading, and it must be dismissed as meaningless and abandoned.
Colin McGinn video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuAvNdbeu8o
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Yes, but... If you realize that nothing could count as an explanation, yet you still feel the burning need of an explanation, then YOU DO NOT NEED MORE PHILOSOPHY, YOU NEED THERAPY!!!
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Philosophical problems originate in misunderstanding the logic of our language.
Philosophy is a kind of therapy.
The aim of philosophy is to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
Philosophical Investigations, §309.
What we cannot speak about we must consign in silence.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Proposition 7
Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951)
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Lecture 3.pdf
The Meaning of Life Lecture 3
Human Fragility and Antifragility
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What words come to mind when you look at this?
Ron Mueck / England b.1958 / In bed 2005 / Mixed media / 161.9 x 649.9 x 395cm / Purchased 2008. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist 2
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Nakedness. Worry. Finitude. Fragility.
We are born naked. We don’t have fur to protect us from the cold, or from bad weather.
We are finite beings.
We face limitations. What kind of limitations do we face?
Physical limitations:
We need food to survive.
We need warmth.
Spatial limitations: we can’t be wherever we want to be.
Temporal limitations: as soon as we are born, our clock is ticking. We are all going to die.
Also, we face limitations of reason and emotion.
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Thrownness Thrownness (German: Geworfenheit) is a concept introduced by German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) to describe humans’ individual existences as "being thrown" (geworfen) into the world.
We did not choose to be born. Rather, we find ourselves existing, Being-in-the-world.
We don’t come with an instruction manual, we have to find out the rules and improvise as we go.
And we know we are going to die (unlike animals).
For Heidegger, what characterizes us as human beings is Being-toward-death, and dread.
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Martin Heidegger 1889-1976
Jim Morrison In 1963 at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Jim Morrison attended a philosophy lecture on Heidegger. He included the concept of thrownness into his song Riders on the storm.
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm
“Actor out on loan” refers to when actors would be “loaned” between studios, not by their choice and not having much to say for it.
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Christopher Bollas: Mental Pain Christopher Bollas is one of the most influential psychoanalysts today.
He argues that the steps we take through childhood are marked by mentally painful episodes that constitute ordinary breakdowns in the self.
Adolescence stands as the most painful such period, during which some of the major disturbances of self arise, including anorexia, schizophrenia, bipolarity, and sociopathy.
Rather than approaching mental pain as a medical condition, Bollas examines it as a constitutive element of human psychic development.
Along with the existentialist philosophers, Bollas regards mental pain not necessarily as a disease or illness, but as the fundamental condition of human beings.
“Mental life is innately hazardous.” 11
Blaise Pascal Heidegger was a 20th century existentialist philosopher.
Existentialism was a philosophical current who emphasized the finitude and the fragility of human beings.
Blaise Pascal was a modern philosopher, contemporary with Descartes.
He is in some sense a precursor to existentialism.
Mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian.
The unit of pressure is bears his name (Pascal, Pa).
He invented an early computer. A programming language bears his name.
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Blaise Pascal
1623-1662
Finitude
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Pascal anticipates several existentialist themes regarding the human condition.
Finitude: we are finite beings midway between Nothing and Infinite.
“For in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.”
Atopical being (without a place; topos=place)
Contingency “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see,
engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not,
I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there;
for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then.” - Pascal
Our ontological position (Finitude: short lifespan, smallness, and
Contingency: I am here rather than there, now rather than then) creates anxiety and astonishment.
The contingency causes anxiety because it reveals our thrownness. 14
Thrownness “Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis.” - Pascal
The memory of a guest of one day that passeth by; From the Book of Wisdom (aka Wisdom of Solomon)
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Limited understanding “Since he (man) is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret, he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up.”
“We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty.
We seek happiness, and find only misery and death.
We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.
This desire is left to us, partly to punish us, partly to make us perceive wherefrom we are fallen.” - Pascal
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Fragility
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“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.
The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him.
But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies.
The Universe knows nothing of the advantage it has has over him.” - Pascal
The dignity of human beings “All our dignity consists, then, in thought.
By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill.
Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.
A thinking reed.—It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought.
I shall have no more if I possess worlds.
By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world. - Pascal
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Throwing off our own thrownness For Heidegger, the human being is not just a being defined by being thrown into the world.
We, through our capacity of understanding, are capable of action.
For Heidegger, understanding always relates to action, it reveals an ability or potentiality.
Like Pascal, Heidegger thinks that through our ability for understanding, we can throw off our own thrown condition, our own thrownness.
The human being can throw off its thrownness in a movement where it seizes hold of its possibilities, where it acts in a concrete situation.
This movement is what Heidegger calls freedom.
Freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept. It is the experience of the human being demonstrating its potential through acting in the world.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Antifragility Concept introduced by Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a risk engineer and quantitative analyst, prof at NYU.
Some things are fragile: they break under stress. Example: a glass breaks if it gets knocked over.
However, "some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.
Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile.”
The concept of antifragility applies in biology:
Wolff's law: bones grow stronger due to external load.
Immune system: gets trained by being exposed to various potential harmful stimuli.
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Human Antifragility Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt (prof of ethical leadership at NYU) has applied the concept of antifragility to human psychology.
Taleb: “Complex systems are weakened, even killed, when deprived of stressors.”
But human beings are complex systems.
So according to Haidt, human beings are antifragile: we are weakened by the absence of stressors, and we gain from their presence.
Nietzsche’s “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”
https://youtu.be/jQcDw1r1lGw?t=1230 (from min 20:30)
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Pascal on the contradictory nature of human beings
“What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy!
Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the Universe!
If he exalt himself, I humble him; if he humble himself, I exalt him; and I always contradict him, till he comprehends that he is an incomprehensible monster.”
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Lecture 4.pdf
The Meaning of Life Lecture 4
Nihilism
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Collapse of the Old Image of the World
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The Death of God
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Modernity and Nihilism
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Modernity and Nihilism
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Theism
Nihilism
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Ecclesiastes
Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus
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Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) Emil Cioran (1911-1995)
Cioran on Suicide
Would nihilism be something bad?
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Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus
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Albert Camus
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Does Nihilism matter?
Is Nihilism something bad?
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The incoherency of nihilism
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The consequence of belief in nihilism
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What are we to do?
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Nietzsche’s “optimism”
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