Why is there anything? (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, April 28, 2012, 15:23 (4593 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Lawrence Krauss defends HIS philosophical ability:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-philos-KRAUSS: "It may be true that we can never fully resolved [sic] the infinite regression of 'why questions' that result whenever one assumes, a priori, that our universe must have some pre-ordained purpose. Or, to frame things in a more theological fashion: 'Why is our Universe necessary rather than contingent?'-One answer to this latter question can come from physics. If all possibilities—all universes with all laws—can arise dynamically, and if anything that is not forbidden must arise, then this implies that both nothing and something must both exist, and we will of necessity find ourselves amidst something. A universe like ours is, in this context, guaranteed to arise dynamically, and we are here because we could not ask the question if our universe weren't here. It is in this sense that I argued that the seemingly profound question of why there is something rather than nothing might be actually no more profound than asking why some flowers are red or some are blue." -From my position on the agnostic fence, this is a non-argument. We don't need to believe in a pre-ordained purpose to have an infinite regression of questions ... namely, not why but how. We simply don't know that "all possibilities etc. can arise dynamically", and so there is no guarantee that our universe could arise dynamically, and while it is obvious to the point of absurdity that we couldn't ask the question if the universe wasn't here, that proves absolutely nothing about how we got here ... from the birth(s) of the universe(s) to the origin of life.-I agree, though, that the seemingly profound question of why there is something rather than nothing is not profound. It doesn't matter a jot whether you believe in a creator or in impersonal natural processes, it all boils down to some form of energy the source of which we shall never know. And I see absolutely no justification for a physicist assuming that his speculations have any more (or any less) validity than those of philosophers.-KRAUSS: What I tried to do in my writing on this subject is carefully attempt to define precisely what scientists operationally mean by nothing, and to differentiate between what we know, and what is merely plausible, and what we might be able to probe in the future, and what we cannot. The rest is, to me, just noise.-I have read the article twice, and would challenge anyone to find where the author "defines precisely" what we cannot probe. That is "precisely" the area that levels out the claims of physicists and philosophers.