Why is there something rather than nothing? (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, March 20, 2011, 22:31 (4793 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,-I bring up this question because in Western Philosophy I have seen very often a deference to eastern philosophy for having contributed more about 'nothing' than anyone in the west has ever done. -This is a very tough nut to crack, and dhw's example begins to show how precisely difficult it is to comprehend nothing. -I am not an expert on this; so bear with me. -
> MATT suggests that an answer to Leibniz's question might be:
> 
> "Nothing cannot be understood without something. 
> Or in other words, you cannot know the difference between nothing and something. They both describe the same thing. One cannot conceive of nothing unless there IS something..."
> 
> Well, this makes a change from "time" ... or does it? I agree that nothing cannot be understood without something, and that one cannot conceive of nothing unless there is something. For one thing, understanding and conceiving are not possible without something (someone) to do the understanding and conceiving! For another, understanding always requires a context, and so nothing would require a something to make it understandable. However, I do not agree that there is no difference between something and nothing, (i.e. that they're the same). If we take as an image a sheet of paper, it's blank if there's nothing written on it, and it's not blank if there's something written on it. The paper itself is something, and it actually enables us to understand the difference between nothing and something. 
> -This is 'nothing' in an extremely contextual circumstance. This is a traditional view in Western thought, that 'nothing' is an absence. You were very careful though to regard the paper as 'something,' but we are far too many levels up in abstraction, that we are missing the point; your nothing isn't really talking about 'nothing.' it's talking about a blank paper. Writing presupposes the existence of the paper. -Buddhist and Vedic thought approach things differently. Instead of starting from the bottom up as we have been trained to do from Plato on... they approach looking at the universe at first--starting with the whole as it were--and drills downward. (It is... completely backwards from what I learned in science classes!) -The true state of the universe is unity; we all understand one universe, and that we are a part of it. Everything else we derive from being born as grains of sands within this unity. -> Similarly, I'd say: "Good cannot be understood without bad, and one cannot conceive of good unless there is bad." On the other hand, I would not say: "You cannot know the difference between good and bad. They both describe the same thing." 
> -Again... it seems to me from your writing that you perfectly conceive of what I'm trying to say; good and bad are simply two views on one act. Eastern thought (concisely) says that 'something' and 'nothing' are exactly the same thing--only in regards to reality, or the universe at large. Nothing can only be understood as the absence of some object, and something with that object's presence. But it is a relational term. An adjective. "Nothing" can't exist without an object. The terms "nothing" and "something" therefore only exist in a pair; you cannot have only one. -> But I don't think Leibniz's famous question concerns understanding or conceiving. His theme, I believe, was 'The Ultimate Origin of Things', and the whole argument seems to me to boil down to David's First Cause. From my seat on the fence I'd say the 'Ultimate Origin of Things' remains as unknowable as it ever was, and so Leibniz's question remains unanswerable.-I agree, but David's had brought it up at least three times in the past couple of months. I think it is good to address some different approaches. Western thought already acknowledge 'nothing' as a very hard to grasp topic. (similarly with time)

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"