Why is there something rather than nothing? (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, March 21, 2011, 20:14 (4792 days ago) @ xeno6696

dhw: 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.
 
MATT: 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.-You have repeated but also slightly distorted my argument, and I'm highlighting this because it seems to me that here, as in the original post, you're conflating understanding with what is. I'm not saying the blank page IS nothing, but that it enables us to understand something which in itself cannot be "grasped": nothing (blankness) cannot exist or be understood without something (paper and writing), but it's not the same as something (writing). You do the same in the following passage, but add further (important) factors which I will try to separate:-MATT: 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 [= THE SAME AS THE "TRADITIONAL" WESTERN CONCEPT, THEN], 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.-(I HAVE TRIED AND FAILED THREE TIMES TO POST THE REST IN NORMAL TYPE, NOT ITALICS, AS I'M NO LONGER QUOTING. MY APOLOGIES FOR WHAT IS NOW A TYPOGRAPHICAL MESS, BUT I'LL FORGIVE YOU IF YOU SAY IT REFLECTS MY MESSY THINKING!)-I accept that all things are interlinked, nothing = an absence of something (a pronoun, though, not an adjective), cannot be understood without something, and cannot exist without something. What I do not understand is the claim that 'something' and 'nothing' are "exactly the same thing". I could accept the argument that nothing IS absence and non-existence, but would you then say that presence and absence, existence and non-existence, are the same thing? 
 
Going back to Leibniz's question, however, I must confess that I find "nothing" inconceivable as a starting point for the universe. If there was a bang, something must have gone bang. You say the predominant thought among eastern religions is that "the universe is ageless and infinite". That makes far more sense to me, especially as it includes the possibility of countless "big bangs", or contractions and expansions. Does that invalidate Leibniz's question? Not for me. I just think that if it's true, it invalidates his answer (which was that 'something' had to be created, and therefore there had to be a creator). Does it invalidate the question of a prime cause? I'd say it's an answer: that the prime cause IS the ageless and infinite universe. (Certain forms of theism could also live with that, by giving the universe a mind.)