## 1. Why is there something rather than nothing?



Well, why not? Why expect nothing rather than something? No experiment
could support the hypothesis 'There is nothing' because
any observation obviously implies the existence of an observer.



Is there any *a priori* support for 'There is
nothing'? One might respond with a methodological principle that
propels the empty world to the top of the agenda. For instance, many
feel that whoever asserts the existence of something has the burden of
proof. If an astronomer says there is water at the south pole of the
Moon, then it is up to him to provide data in support of the lunar
water. If we were not required to have evidence to back our
existential claims, then a theorist who fully explained the phenomena
with one set of things could gratuitously add an extra entity, say, a
pebble outside our light cone. We recoil from such add-ons. To prevent
the intrusion of superfluous entities, one might demand that
metaphysicians start with the empty world and admit only those
entities that have credentials. This is the entry requirement imposed
by Rene Descartes. He clears everything out and then only lets
back in what can be *proved* to exist.



St. Augustine had more conservative counsel: we should not start at
the beginning, nor at the end, but where we are, in the middle. We
reach a verdict about the existence of controversial things by
assessing how well these entities would harmonize with the existence
of better established things. If we start from nothing, we lack the
bearings needed to navigate forward. Conservatives, coherentists and
scientific gradualists all cast a suspicious eye on 'Why is
there something rather than nothing?'.



Most contemporary philosophers feel entitled to postulate whatever
entities are indispensable to their best explanations of well accepted
phenomena. They feel the presumption of non-existence is only
plausible for particular existence claims. Since the presumption only
applies on a case by case basis, there is no grand methodological
preference for an empty world. Furthermore, there is no burden of
proof when everybody concedes the proposition under discussion. Even a
solipsist agrees there is at least one thing!



A more popular way to build a presumption in favor of nothingness is
to associate nothingness with simplicity and simplicity with
likelihood. The first part of this justification is plausible.
'Nothing exists' is simple in the sense of being an easy
to remember generalization. Consider a test whose questions have the
form 'Does *x* exist?'. The rule 'Always
answer no!' is unsurpassably short and comprehensive.



In *Les Miserables*, Victor Hugo contrasts universal
negation with universal affirmation:



> 
> All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the
> word 'no.' To 'no' there is only one answer
> and that is 'yes.' Nihilism has no substance. There is no
> such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is
> something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by
> bread. (1862, 439).
> 



As far as simplicity is concerned, there is a tie between the
nihilistic rule 'Always answer no!' and the inflationary
rule 'Always answer yes!'. Neither rule makes for serious
metaphysics.



Even if 'Nothing exists' were the uniquely simplest
possibility (as measured by memorability), why should we expect that
possibility to be actual? In a fair lottery, we assign the same
probability of winning to the ticket unmemorably designated 4,169,681
as to the ticket memorably labeled 1,111,111.



Indeed, the analogy with a lottery seems to dramatically reverse the
presumption of non-existence. If there is only one empty world and
many populated worlds, then a random selection would lead us to expect
a populated world.



Peter van Inwagen (1996) has nurtured this statistical argument. In an
infinite lottery, the chance that a given ticket is the winner is 0.
Van Inwagen reasons that since there are infinitely many populated
worlds, the probability of a populated world is equal to 1. Although
the empty world is not impossible, it is as improbable as anything can
be!



For the sake of balanced reporting, van Inwagen should acknowledge
that, by his reasoning, the actual world is also as improbable as
anything can be. What really counts here is the probability of
'There is something' as opposed to 'There is
nothing'.



Is this statistical explanation scientific? Scientists stereotypically
offer causal explanations. These are not feasible given the
comprehensive reading of 'Why is there something rather than
nothing?'. However, scientists also accept equilibrium
explanations (Sperry-Taylor 2019). These explain the actual situation
as the outcome of most or all of the possible initial states. There is
no attempt to trace the path by which the actual initial state
developed into the present situation. It suffices that the result is
invariant. Why do I have enough oxygen to breathe even though all the
oxygen molecules could have congregated in one corner of my room? The
physicist explains that while this specific arrangement is just as
likely as any other, the overwhelming majority of arrangements do not
segregate oxygen.


## 2. Is there at most one empty world?



Most philosophers would grant Peter van Inwagen's premise that
there is no more than one empty world. They have been trained to model
the empty world on the empty set. There can be no more than one empty
set because distinct sets require a difference in their members.



However, medieval philosophers differentiated empty worlds by the
power of places within those worlds (Grant 1981). The Condemnation of
1277 forced Aristotelian philosophers to acknowledge the possibility
of a void (to respect God's omnipotence and the Christian
doctrine of creation from nothing). Most thinkers retained
Aristotle's assumption that there was a unique center of the
universe. If rocks were introduced into such a world, they would all
head toward their natural location at the center of the universe.
(Aristotle used this point to provide a spectacular explanation of why
there are not two earths; they would have collided!) However, Nicole
Oresme imagined a world without any center. He predicted the rocks
would head toward each other. Since air, fire, earth, and water each
had their own places in Aristotle's physics, fourteenth century
philosophers could imagine worlds that differed as to which of these
places to retain. The void was rarely pictured as homogeneous.



Aristotle's world is self-governed. Objects have powers that
collectively explain the order of the universe. Thinkers in the
Abrahamic tradition replaced Aristotle's invisible hand
explanation with God's hidden hand. God dictated laws of nature
to which He made periodic adjustments (like clockmakers who regularly
serviced their creations, correcting the accumulating errors). Focus
on God's perfection made attributions of divine intervention
resemble left-handed compliments to God's Intelligence. After
the attributions of miracles were retracted, God Himself was retired.
What was left were relic "laws of nature". Since a
Necessary Being no longer guided the legislation, the actual world
emerged as highly contingent. At first blush, this vindicates van
Inwagen's probabilistic argument. But the contingency of laws
also raises the possibility of individuating empty worlds by their
laws (Carroll 1994, 64). For instance, Isaac Newton's first law
of motion says an undisturbed object will continue in motion in a
straight line. Some previous physicists suggested that such an object
will slow down and tend to travel in a circle. This empty world
differs from the Newtonian empty world because different
counterfactual statements are true of it.



If variation in empty worlds can be sustained by differences in the
laws that apply to them, there will be infinitely many empty worlds.
The gravitational constant of an empty world can equal any real number
between 0 and 1, so there are more than countably many empty worlds.
Indeed, any order of infinity achieved by the set of populated
possible worlds will be matched by the set of empty worlds.



John Heil (2013) is bemused by this War of the Possible Worlds. Having
dispensed with the Law Maker, we should repudiate the Laws of Nature.
Once we return to a self-governed world, there will be no worry about
the world as a lucky accident. As Immanuel Kant emphasized in his
explanation of why science cannot establish necessary truths, we do
not literally see actual states of affairs as being contingent rather
than necessary. Contingency, unlike color or shape, is not
perceptible. Nor is there any presumption for regarding states of
affairs as contingent.



Subjective chance does not suffice for objective chance. To
demonstrate the impossibility of long-term prediction, Daniel
Kahneman, Oliver Sibony and Cass Sunstein invite the reader to
"consider the fact that at the instant of conception, there was
an even chance that every significant figure in history (and also the
insignificant onces) would be born with a different gender".
(2021, 141) Those who believe in the necessity of origins will
disagree. According to Saul Kripke (1990, 112-113), Socrates
could not have originated from a sperm-egg combination other than the
one from which he actually originated. Since the Y chromosome of his
father dictated Socrates' biological gender, Socrates is as
essentially male as he is essentially human. When we imagine
Sophroniscus siring a daughter with Phaenarete in 469 BC, we are
imagining Socrates failing to exist. Kripke's metaphysics also
precludes the consolation Richard Dawkins offers in *Unweaving the
Rainbow:* "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky
ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going
to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place
outnumber the sand grains of Arabia." (1998, 1). From
Kripke's perspective, the number of non-existent people is zero.
When we speak of those who are never conceived, we are imagining a
possible world with a population originating from alternative
sperm-egg combinations. They would have existed but do not exist. 



Notoriously, the modal realist David Lewis (1986) contends that people
in other possible worlds exist just as much as actual people. These
people have no more reason to envy us than we have for envying them.
Relative to the world of these potential people, *we* are the
non-actual people. 'Actual' is an indexical term on a par
with 'here' and 'now'. I can pity my freezing
friends in Canada for not being here now in the mild winter of Austin,
Texas. But that is because the Canadians could travel to Austin. There
is no travel between possible worlds. According to Lewis, no object
exists in more than one possible world. When you imagine yourself not
existing, you are thinking about a possible world that resembles the
actual world except there is no counterpart of you. *Your*
existence in the actual world is not a matter of luck. The feeling
that you've won the lottery for existence arises from the striking
resemblance between the actual world and a possible world in which
some other child is conceived by counterparts of your parents.



Surprise that something exists is just as metaphysically laden as
surprise that you exist. According to Heil, 'Why is there
something rather than nothing?' owes its urgency to a partisan
background theory, not a neutral arbiter such as perception or
methodology.



Although possible worlds became popular among analytic philosophers
after revolutionary advances in modal logic in the 1960s, possible
worlds receive little attention from existentialists. Their discussion
of objects is more in line with powers ontology advocated by Heil.
Indeed, some existentialists picture nothingness as a kind of force
that impedes each object's existence. Since there is something
rather than nothing, any such nihilating force cannot have actually
gone unchecked. What could have blocked it? Robert Nozick (1981, 123)
toys with an interpretation of Heidegger in which this nihilating
force is self-destructive. This kind of double-negation is depicted in
the Beatles's movie *Yellow Submarine*. There is a
creature that zooms around like a vacuum cleaner, emptying everything
in its path. When this menace finally turns on itself, a richly
populated world pops into existence.



Some cultures have creation myths reminiscent of *Yellow
Submarine*. Heidegger would dismiss them as inappropriately
historical. 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'
is not about the origin of the world. Increasing the scientific
respectability of the creation story (as with the Big Bang hypothesis)
would still leave Heidegger objecting that the wrong question is being
addressed.


## 3. Can there be an explanatory framework for the question?



Some disagree with Peter van Inwagen's assumption that each
possible world is as likely as any other (Kotzen 2013). There have
been metaphysical systems that favor less populated worlds.



Indeed, the original purveyor of possible worlds, Gottfried Leibniz,
pictured possible things as angling to become actual. The more a thing
competes with other things, the more likely that there will be
something that stops it from becoming real. The winners in
Leibniz's struggle for existence are cooperative. They uniquely
fit the niche formed by other things. This key hole into existence
implicitly conveys information about everything. The little bit that
is not, tells us about all that there is.



On the one hand, this metaphysical bias in favor of simplicity is
heartening because it suggests that the actual world is not too
complex for human understanding. Scientists have penetrated deeply
into the physical world with principles that emphasize parsimony and
uniformity: Ockham's razor, the least effort principle, the
anthropic principle, etc.



On the other hand, Leibniz worried that the metaphysical bias for
simplicity, when driven to its logical conclusion, yields the
embarrassing prediction that there is nothing. After all, an empty
world would be free of objects trying to elbow each other out. It is
the world that requires the least effort to produce (Just do nothing!)
and sustain (Continue doing nothing!). So why is there something
rather than nothing? Even if there were previously something, why is
there *still* something? Why is so much still going on? To
avoid an answer that assigns us a special position in history, we
would have to model the universe as a perpetual motion machine. 



When worried by the bias in favor of simplicity, Leibniz pictures each
nominee for existence as in a limbo between being and non-being. The
least complicated election is for none of the nominees to win a post.
Any other election is arbitrary. But this election is superfluous if
there are no degrees of being. Given that existence is discrete, there
is no boundary between non-existent things and existent things. 



Leibniz's limbo illustrates an explanatory trap. To explain why
something exists, we standardly appeal to the existence of something
else. There are mountain ranges on Earth because there are plates on
its surface that slowly collide and crumple up against each other.
There are rings around Saturn because there is an immense quantity of
rubble orbiting that planet. This pattern of explanation is not
possible for 'Why is there something rather than
nothing?'. For instance, if we answer 'There is something
because the Universal Designer wanted there to be something',
then our explanation takes for granted the existence of the Universal
Designer. Someone who poses the question in a comprehensive way will
not grant the existence of the Universal Designer as a starting
point.



If the explanation cannot begin with some entity, then it is hard to
see how any explanation is feasible. Some philosophers conclude
'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is
unanswerable. They think the question stumps us by imposing an
impossible explanatory demand, namely, *Deduce the existence of
something without using any existential premises.* Logicians
should feel no more ashamed of their inability to perform this
deduction than geometers should feel ashamed at being unable to square
the circle.



David Hume offers a consolation prize: we might still be able to
explain the existence of each event even if it is impossible to
explain everything all together. Suppose that the universe is
populated with an infinite row of dominoes. The fall of each domino
can be explained by the fall of its predecessor.



But what is responsible for the arrangement to begin with? Why is
there anything in our domain of discourse? This kind of comprehensive
questioning has long been alleged to commit the fallacy of
composition. Questions that can be asked of elements within a system
need not be questions that can be asked of the system itself. Taking a
step back to the bigger picture is fine. But when the philosopher
steps back to get the biggest picture, he loses his footing. According
to Immanuel Kant, the fall is misgauged as deep inquiry. 



In the twentieth century, Russell's set paradox raised another
challenge. If there is a set for every property, there should be a set
that contains all only those sets that do not contain themselves as a
member. But the existence of such a set would imply a contradiction.
So set theory needed to preclude this universal set. This raises
concern about other totalities. The universe is, well, universal. When
the monist says there is exactly one thing, he imposes an endogenous
demand on that thing (Do not be two things!) and an exogenous demand
on everything else (Do not exist!). This exogenous demand involves
absolute generality. Normally, quantification is restricted to a
domain of discourse. If this normal relativity is actually mandatory,
we cannot ask the question that the monist seeks to answer: How many
things are there? Any number, including zero, would require
unrestricted quantification. 



'How many things are there?' also seems viciously
abstract. A sortal such as KITTEN tells us the nature of a thing,
thereby supplying criteria for counting and persistence. THING is a
dummy sortal. How many things do you have when you have a capped pen?
The question cannot be answered because you have not been given
criteria governing whether the cap and the pen count as separate
objects. All questions about existence must be relativized to sorts.
Consequently, the question of why there is something rather than
nothing is incomplete. Once we remedy the incompleteness with a
sortal, the question will be answered by science.



Empiricists such as Hume deny that the existence of anything could be
proved by reason alone. Rationalists have been more optimistic. Many
have offered *a priori* proofs of God's existence. Such a
proof would double as an explanation of why there is something. If God
exists, then something exists. After all, God is something.



But would God be the right sort of something? If we are only seeking
an *a priori* proof of something (*anything* at all!),
then why not rest content with a mathematical demonstration that there
exists an integer between a square and a cube? *There must exist
such an integer because 25 is a square and 27 is a cube and only one
integer can be between 25 and 27. Therefore, something exists.*
Why does this come off as a mathematical joke?


## 4. The restriction to concrete entities



Van Inwagen's answer is that we are actually interested in
*concrete* things. A grain of sand, a camel, and an oasis are
each concrete entities. Each is part of the causal order. In contrast,
abstract entities (numbers, sets, possible worlds) do not cause
anything. Those who adopt the principle that only causes are real will
become nominalists; everything is concrete.



A second characterization of concrete entities is in terms of
locatability; a concrete entity has a position in space or time. Since
concrete entities are situated, they have boundaries with their
environment. (The only exception would be an entity that took up all
space or all time, say the perfect animal described in Plato's
Timaeus.)



Admittedly, points in space and time have locations. But concrete
entities are only accidentally where and when they are. All concrete
entities have intrinsic properties (which make their boundaries
natural rather than conventional, say Efird and Stoneham (2005, 314)).
Their natures are not exhausted by their relationships with other
things. Max Black imagines twin iron spheres in an otherwise empty
universe. The spheres are distinct yet have the same relationships and
the same intrinsic properties.



All material things are concrete but some concrete things might be
immaterial. Shadows and holes have locations and durations but they
are not made of anything material. There is extraneous light in
shadows and extraneous matter in holes; but these are contaminants
rather than constituents. Cracks can spread, be counted, and
concealed. Once we acknowledge the existence of cracks, we get an
unexpected transcendental explanation of why there is something:
*If there is nothing then there is an absence of anything.
Therefore, there exists something (either a positive concrete entity
or an absence).*



Ontological pluralists do not dismiss this proof as sophistry. Kris
McDaniel (2013, 277) thinks the proof is trivially correct. To address
a more interesting question, McDaniel follows Aristotle's
principle that there are many ways of being. From the
pluralist's perspective, debate over whether holes exist is
equivocal. The friends of absences use a broad sense of
'being'. The enemies of holes speak from a higher link in
the chain of being. From this altitude, holes depend on their hosts
and so cannot be as real. Alexius Meinong's talk of subsistence
alludes to the lowest level of being. "Why does anything
subsist?" is a perfectly legitimate question, according to
McDaniel.



If there are souls or Cartesian minds, then they will also qualify as
immaterial, concrete entities. Although they do not take up space,
they take up time. An idealist such as George Berkeley could ask
'Why is there something rather than nothing?' even though
he was convinced that material things are not possible.



William James denied that his defense of parapsychology provided a
resource for answering, 'How comes the world to be here at all
instead of the non-entity which might be imagined in its place?'
Philosophy, be it natural or supernatural, can make no progress on
this issue "for from nothing to being there is no logical
bridge" (1911, 40). James concludes: "The question of
being is the darkest in all philosophy. All of us are beggars here,
and no school can speak disdainfully of another or give itself
superior airs" (1911, 46).



Although all concrete things are in space or time, neither space nor
time are concrete things. Where would space be? When would time occur?
These questions can only be answered if space were contained in
another higher space. Time would be dated within another time. Since
the same questions can be posed for higher order space and higher
order time, we would face an infinite regress.



There is no tradition of wondering 'Why is there space and
time?'. One reason is that space and time seem like a framework
for there being any contingent things.



Absolutists think of the framework as existing independently of what
it frames. For instance, Newton characterized space as an eternal,
homogeneous, three dimensional container of infinite extent. He
believed that the world was empty of objects for an infinite period
prior to creation (setting aside an omnipresent God). An empty world
would merely be a continuation of what creation interrupted.



Others think the framework depends on what it frames. Like Leibniz,
Albert Einstein pictured (or "pictured") space as an
abstraction from relations between objects. Consequently, space can be
described with the same metaphors we use for family trees. Maybe space
grows bigger. Maybe space is curved or warped or has holes. There is
much room to wonder why space has the properties that it has. But
since space is an abstraction from objects, answers to any riddles
about space reduce to questions about objects. One can wonder why
there is space. But this is only to wonder why there are objects.


## 5. The contingency dilemma



Earth would not have existed had the matter which now constitutes our
solar system formed, as usual, two stars instead of one. If no
concrete thing is a necessary being, then no concrete thing can
explain the existence of concrete things.



Even if God is not concrete, proof of His existence would raise hope
of explaining the existence of concrete things. For instance, the
*Genesis* creation story suggests that God made everything
without relying on any antecedent ingredients. The story also suggests
that God had a reason to create. If this account could be corroborated
we would have an explanation of why there are some concrete
things.



This divine explanation threatens to over-explain the data. Given that
God is a necessary being and that the existence of God necessitates
the existence of Earth, then Earth would be a necessary being rather
than a contingent being.



The dilemma was generalized by William Rowe (1975). Consider all the
contingent truths. The conjunction of all these truths is itself a
contingent truth. On the one hand, this conjunction cannot be
explained by any contingent truth because the conjunction already
contains all contingent truths; the explanation would be circular. On
the other hand, this conjunction cannot be explained by a necessary
truth because a necessary truth can only imply other necessary truths.
This dilemma suggests that 'Why are there any contingent
beings?' is impossible to answer.



Rowe presupposes that an answer would have to be a *deductive*
explanation. If there are 'inferences to the best
explanation' or inductive explanations, then there might be a
way through the horns of Rowe's dilemma.



There also remains hope that Rowe's dilemma can be bypassed by
showing that the empty world is not a genuine possibility. Then the
retort to 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is
'There is no alternative to there being something!'.



'There might be nothing' is false when read epistemically.
(Roughly, a proposition is epistemically possible if it is consistent
with everything that is known.) For we know that something
*actually* exists and knowledge of actuality precludes all
rival epistemic possibilities. But when read metaphysically,
'There might be nothing' seems true. So 'Why is
there something rather than nothing?' is, so far, a live
question.



The question is not undermined by the *a priori* status of
knowledge that something exists. (I know *a priori* that
something exists because I know *a priori* that I exist and
know this entails 'Something exists'.) Knowledge, even
*a priori* knowledge, that something is actually true is
compatible with ignorance as to how it could be true.



Residual curiosity is possible even when the proposition is known to
be a necessary truth. A *reductio ad absurdum* proof that 1
[?] 1/3 + 1/5 [?] 1/7 + ... converges to p/4 might
persuade one that there is no alternative without illuminating how it
could be true. For this brute style of proof does not explain how p
wandered into the solution. (*Reductio ad absurdum* just shows
a contradiction would follow if the conclusion were not true.) This
raises the possibility that even a logical demonstration of the
metaphysical necessity of 'Something exists' might still
leave us asking why there is something rather than nothing (though
there would no longer be the wonder about the accidentality of there
being something). This leads Andrew Brenner (2016) to deny that
'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is
restricted to contingent entities. Brenner argues the question is
highly ambiguous. At best there is only a family resemblance between
the questions under discussion. What appears to be disagreement is too
often a verbal dispute.


## 6. The intuitive primacy of positive truths



Henri Bergson maintained that the positive nature of reality pre-empts
nothingness (Sorensen 2022, 283). The absence of green mammals is not
a brute fact. 'There are no green mammals' is made true by
a positive fact that all mammals are hairy and there are only two
pigments for hair - one producing black or brown hair, the other
yellow or reddish orange. No mixture of those pigments yields green.
Once we have the positive facts and the notion of negation, we can
derive all the negative facts. 'There is nothing' would be
a contingent, negative fact. But then it would have to be grounded on
some positive reality. That positive reality would ensure that there
is something rather than nothing.



Human beings have a strong intuition that positive truths, such as
'Elephants are huge' are more fundamental than negative
truths such as 'Elephants do not jump'. The robustness of
this tendency makes negative things objects of amusement. Consider the
Professor's remark during his chilly banquet in Lewis
Carroll's *Sylvie and Bruno Concluded*.



> 
> "I hope you'll enjoy the dinner--such as it is; and
> that you won't mind the heat--such as it
> isn't."
> 
> 
> The sentence *sounded* well, but somehow I couldn't quite
> understand it ... (chapter 22)
> 
> 
> 



How can we perceive absences? They seem causally inert and so not the
sort of thing that we could check empirically. Negative truths seem
redundant; there are no more truths than those entailed by the
conjunction of all positive truths. The negative truths seem
psychological; we only assert negative truths to express a frustrated
expectation. When Jean Paul Sartre (1969, 41) arrives late for his
appointment with Pierre at the cafe, he sees the absence of Pierre but
not the absence of the Duke of Wellington.



Philosophers have had much trouble vindicating any of these
intuitions. They still try to preserve as much of the positivity as
they can. For instance, Stephen Mumford (2021) characterizes himself
as a "soft Parmenidean". His 21st century willingness to
tolerate some negativity is informed by Bertrand Russell's 20th
century failure to reduce negative truths to positive truths. Russell
(1985) tried paraphrasing 'The cat is not on the mat' as
'There is a state of affairs incompatible with the cat being on
the mat'. But this paraphrase is covertly negative; it uses
'incompatible' which means *not* compatible. He
tried modeling 'Not *p*' as an expression of
disbelief that *p*. But 'disbelief' means believing
that something is *not* the case. Is it even clear that
absences are causally inert? Trapped miners are killed by the absence
of oxygen. In the end Russell surrendered his intuition that reality
is positive. In a famous lecture at Harvard, Russell concluded that
irreducibly negative facts exist. He reports this nearly caused a
riot.



Were it not for the threat to social order, one might stand the
intuition on its head: Negative truths are more fundamental than
positive truths. From a logical point of view, there is greater
promise in a reduction of positive truths to negative truths. Positive
truths can be analyzed as the negations of negative truths or perhaps
as frustrated disbelief. Positive truths would then be the redundant
hanger-ons, kept in circulation by our well-documented difficulty in
coping with negative information. Think of photographic negatives.
They seem less informative than positive prints. But since the prints
are manufactured from the negatives, the negatives must be merely more
difficult for us to process.



As difficult as negation might be psychologically, it is easier to
work with than the alternatives suggested by Henry Sheffer. In 1913,
he demonstrated that all of the logical connectives can be defined in
terms of the dual of conjunction, now known as NAND (short for NOT
AND). Sheffer translates '*p* NAND *q*' as
'either not *p* or not *q*'. 'Not
*p*' is defined as '*p* NAND
*p*'. Sheffer notes that the dual of disjunction, NOR
(short for NOT OR), can also define all the connectives. Sheffer
translates '*p* NOR *q*' as 'neither
*p* nor *q*'. From a logical point of view,
negation is dispensable. This raises hope that all of
Parmenides' paradoxes of negation can be translated away.



Bertrand Russell quickly incorporated NAND into *Principia
Mathematica*. Sheffer's functions have also been a great
economy to the assembly line symbol manipulation of computers (as
witnessed by the popularity of NAND gates and NOR gates). However,
human beings have trouble achieving fluency with Sheffer's
connectives. Even Sheffer translates them negatively. Psychologically,
the phrases 'either not *p* or not *q*' and
'neither *p* nor *q*' are each heard as a
double dose of negation rather than as an alternative to negation.



But we could let computers do our metaphysics just as we let them do
our taxes. The only serious objection is that the problems of negation
do not really go away when we translate into artificial languages. For
instance, the challenge posed by negative existential sentences such
as 'Pegasus does not exist' persists when translated as
'Pegasus exists NAND Pegasus exists'. Any desire to make
'Pegasus does not exist' come out true warrants a desire
to make 'Pegasus exists NAND Pegasus exists' come out
true. (Since classical logic does not permit empty names, the NAND
existential sentence will not be true.)



The more general concern is that the problems which are naturally
couched in terms of negation persist when they are translated into a
different logical vocabulary. Given that the translation preserves the
meaning of the philosophical riddle, it will also preserve its
difficulty.



We engage in negative thinking to avoid highly complicated positive
thinking. What is the probability of getting at least one head in ten
tosses of a coin? Instead of directly computing the probability of
this highly disjunctive positive event, we switch to a negative
perspective. We first calculate the probability of a total absence of
heads and then exploit the complement rule: Probability (at least one
head) = 1 [?] Probability (no heads). An apt anagram of NEGATIVISM
is TIMESAVING.



Some possible worlds are easier to contemplate negatively. Thales said
that all is water. Suppose he was nearly right except for the
existence of two bubbles. These two absences of water become the
interesting players (just as two drops of water in an otherwise empty
space become interesting players in the dual of this universe). How
would these bubbles relate to each other? Would the bubbles repel each
other? Would the bubbles be mutually unaffected? Deep thinking about
gravity yields the conclusion that the bubbles would attract each
other! (Epstein 1983, 138-9)



The hazard of drawing metaphysical conclusions from psychological
preferences is made salient by caricatures. We know that caricatures
are exaggerated representations. Despite the flagrant distortion (and
actually because of it) we more easily recognize people from moderate
caricatures rather than from faithful portraits.



For navigational purposes, we prefer schematic subway maps over ones
that do justice to the lengths and curves of the track lines. But this
is not a basis for inferring that reality is correspondingly
schematic.



Our predilection for positive thinking could reflect an objective
feature of our world (instead of being a mere anthropocentric
projection of one style of thought). But if this objective
positiveness is itself contingent, then it does not explain why there
is something rather than nothing. For Bergson's explanation to
succeed, the positive nature of reality needs to be a metaphysically
necessary feature.


## 7. The subtraction argument



Thomas Baldwin (1996) reinforces the possibility of an empty world by
refining the following thought experiment: Imagine a world in which
there are only finitely many objects. Suppose each object vanishes in
sequence. Eventually you run down to three objects, two objects, one
object and then *Poof!* There's your empty world.



What can be done temporally can be done modally. There is only a small
difference between a possible world with a hundred objects and a
possible world with just ninety-nine, and from there .... well,
just do the arithmetic!



Can the subtraction be completed if there necessarily are infinitely
many things? Penelope Maddy (1990) claims that unit sets are concrete
entities, sharing the location of their members. The existence of one
concrete entity would guarantee the existence of infinitely many.
Consequently, there would be no finite worlds.



Baldwin avoids this issue with a different definition. Concrete
entities are violators of Leibniz's principle of the identity of
indiscernibles. Concrete things may have exact duplicates. For
instance, Cameron Winklevoss could have a twin who *perfectly*
resembles him (unlike his homozygotic twin Tyler Winklevoss). In
contrast, the unit set comprised of Cameron Winklevoss cannot have a
perfect twin. All sets obey Leibniz's principle of the identity
of indiscernibles and so Baldwin counts sets as abstract entities.



Geraldine Coggins (2010, chapter 4) objects that Baldwin's
definition of concreteness is inferior to the customary spatiotemporal
definition. She deems the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic
properties as too problematic to ground the distinction between
concrete and abstract objects.



Another concern is that infinite proliferation can be precipitated by
the constitution relation. Assume that each part of a concrete entity
is itself concrete. Also assume that concrete entities are infinitely
divisible (as seems natural given that space is dense). An infinitely
complex object cannot be nibbled away with any number of finite
bites.



Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (2013) suggests that we instead take big,
infinite bites. Instead of subtracting entity by entity, subtract by
the chunk (of infinitely composite entities).



Our metaphysical calculations are subliminally influenced by how we
picture possible worlds (Coggins 2010, chapter 3). If possible worlds
are envisaged as containers, then they can be completely emptied.
Similarly, if possible worlds are pictured as stories (say maximally
consistent ways things could have been), then our library will contain
a tale lacking any concrete entities as characters. But if possible
worlds are pictured mereologically, as giant conglomerates of concrete
objects (Lewis 1986), our subtraction falters before we reach zero.
Similarly, if possible worlds require an active construction (say,
imaginary rearrangements of objects drawn from the actual world), then
the very process of construction ensures that there are some concrete
objects in every possible world.



Some kind of background theory of possible worlds is needed. For
without this substantive guidance, the subtraction argument seems
invalid. More specifically, from a metaphysically neutral perspective,
the fact that it is possible for each object to not exist seems
compatible with it being necessary that at least one object
exists.



The founder of modal logic, Aristotle, has special reason to deny that
'Necessarily (*p* or *q*)' entails
'Necessarily *p* or necessarily *q*'.
Aristotle believed that all abstract entities depend on concrete
entities for their existence. Yet he also believed that there are
necessary truths. The existence of any particular individual is
contingent but it is necessary that some individuals exist.



Science textbooks teem with contingent abstract entities: the equator,
Jupiter's center of gravity, the European Space Agency's
budget, etc. Twentieth century mathematics made sets central. Sets are
defined in terms of their members. Therefore, any set that contains a
contingent entity is itself a contingent entity. Any set that contains
Cameron Winklevoss is an abstract entity that has no weight or color
or electric charge. But it still depends on Cameron Winklevoss for its
existence.



Mathematics can be reconstructed in terms of sets given the assumption
that something exists. From Cameron Winklevoss, set theorists can
derive the set containing him, then the set containing that set, then
the set containing that larger set, and so on. Through arachnophilic
craftiness, all of mathematics can be reconstructed from sets. But
founding all of mathematics on Cameron Winklevoss would fail to
reflect the necessary status of mathematical truth. Founding
mathematics on a necessary being such as God would alienate atheists.
So ecumenical set theorists instead spin this amazing structure from
only the set that does not depend on the existence of anything: the
empty set. This is the closest mathematicians get to creation from
nothing!



This does not avoid all controversy. Early set theorists and an array
of contemporary metaphysicians reject the empty set. Yet the
loveliness of the construction makes many of their colleagues
receptive to Wesley Salmon's ontological argument: "The
fool saith in his heart that there is no empty set. But if that were
so, then the set of all such sets would be empty, and hence
*it* would be the empty set." (Gardner 1977, 32).



E. J. Lowe (2013, 192) argues on behalf of the fool: Two sets are
identical exactly if they have the same members. So the identity of a
set is grounded on the identity conditions of its members. In the
absence of members, the set is ill-defined. Mathematicians may wield
it as a useful fiction. But utility should not be confused with truth.
Since mathematical statements such as 'The first prime number
after 1,000,000 is 1,000,003' are necessary truths and can only
be rendered true by the existence of a contingent being, such as
Cameron Winklevoss, Lowe concludes that there necessarily exists at
least one contingent being. Consequently, the empty world is
impossible even if there are no necessary beings.



There are other metaphysical systems that make the existence of some
concrete entities necessary without implying that there are any
necessarily existing concrete things. In his *Tractatus* phase,
Ludwig Wittgenstein takes a world to be a totality of facts. A fact
consists of one or more objects related to each other in a certain
way. By an act of selective attention, we concentrate on just the
objects or just the relations. But objects and relations are always
inextricably bound up with each other. Since every fact requires at
least one object, a world without objects would be a world without
facts. But a factless world is a contradiction in terms. Therefore,
the empty world is impossible.



Nevertheless, the persuasiveness of the subtraction argument is not
entirely hostage to background theories about the nature of possible
worlds. Even those with metaphysical systems that guarantee the
existence of some concrete entities feel pressure to revise those
systems to accommodate the empty world, or at least to look for some
loophole that would make their system compatible with Baldwin's
thought experiment.



Consider the combinatorialist David Armstrong. He eventually
acquiesced to the empty world by relaxing his account of truthmakers.
A truthmaker is a piece of reality that makes a statement true.
Armstrong believes that every contingent truth is made true by a
truthmaker and has wielded the principle forcefully against analytical
behaviorists, phenomenalists, nominalists, and presentists. Since
there can be no truthmaker for an empty world, Armstrong appears to
have a second objection to the empty world (supplementing the
objection based on his combinatorial conception of a possible world).
Yet Armstrong (2004, 91) instead claims that the empty world could
borrow truthmakers from the actual world. His idea is that the
truthmakers for possibilities are actual objects and that these actual
objects could serve as the truthmakers for the empty world. David
Efird and Tom Stoneham (2009) object that cross-world truthmakers
would be equally handy to the analytical behaviorists, phenomenalists
and their ilk. Whether or not Armstrong has contradicted himself, he
has illustrated the persuasiveness of the subtraction argument.


## 8. Ontological neutrality



Aristotle assumes that universal generalizations have existential
import; 'All gods are immortal' implies that there are
gods. Contemporary logicians agree that universal quantifiers have
existential import: pantheism, 'All is god', entails
theism, 'There is a god' . However, contemporary logicians
differ from Aristotle in analyzing universal generalizations as
conditionals. They think 'All gods are immortal' has the
form 'For each thing, if it is a god, then it is
immortal'. So if there are no gods, the conditional is vacuously
true. This explains why the atheist can consistently argue: All gods
are immortal. Immortality is impossible. Therefore, there are no
gods.



Contemporary logicians are also impressed by the intuitive equivalence
between 'All men are mortal' and its contrapositive
'All immortals are non-men'. This equivalence is predicted
by the hypothesis that universal generalizations are conditionals.



Tolerance of vacuously true generalizations does not stop contemporary
classical logic from precluding an empty world. Since its universal
quantifier has existential import, each of its logical laws imply that
something exists. For instance, the principle of identity,
*Everything is identical to itself* entails *There exists
something that is identical to itself*. Many attractive inferences
are jeopardized by the empty world.



Logicians do not treat their intolerance of the empty world as a
resource for metaphysicians. They do not want to get involved in
metaphysical disputes. They feel that logic should be neutral with
respect to the existence of anything. They yearn to rectify this
"defect in logical purity" (Russell 1919, 203).



The ideal of ontological neutrality has led some philosophers to
reject classical logic. A direct response would be to challenge the
existential import of the classical quantifiers.



Proponents of "free logic" prefer to challenge the
existential presupposition of singular terms (Lambert 2003, 124). In
classical logic, names must have bearers. Free logic lacks this
restriction and so countenances empty names as in 'Sherlock
Holmes is a detective' and negative existentials such as
'Pegasus does not exist'. Proponents of free logic suggest
that these departures are a necessary condition for not trivially
implying an existential proposition. Jan Heylen (2017) agrees but
contends that free logic trivially implies other existential
sentences. He concludes that any deductive answer to the question will
beg the question. The background logic will always intrude.



In any case, the changes recommended by free logicians would certainly
undermine W. V. O. Quine's (1953a) popular criterion for
ontological commitment. Quine says that we can read off our ontology
from the existentially quantified statements constituting our
well-accepted theories. For instance, if evolutionary theory says that
there are some species that evolved from other species, and if we have
no way to paraphrase away this claim, then biologists are committed to
the existence of species. Since philosophers cannot improve on the
credentials of a scientific commitment, metaphysicians would also be
obliged to accept species.



So how does Quine defend his criterion of ontological commitment from
the menace looming from the empty domain? By compromise. Normally one
thinks of a logical theorem as a proposition that holds in all
domains. Quine (1953b, 162) suggests that we weaken the requirement to
that of holding in all non-empty domains. In the rare circumstances in
which the empty universe must be considered, there is an easy way of
testing which theorems will apply: count all the universal
quantifications as true, and all the existential quantifications as
false, and then compute for the remaining theorems.



Is Quine being *ad hoc*? Maybe. But exceptions are common for
notions in the same family as the empty domain. For instance,
instructors halt their students' natural pattern of thinking
about division to forestall the disaster that accrues from permitting
division by zero. If numbers were words, zero would be an irregular
verb.


## 9. The problem of multiple nothings



Many of the principles used to rule out total emptiness also preclude
small pockets of emptiness. Leibniz says that the actual world must
have something rather than nothing because the actual world must be
the best of all possible worlds, and something is better than nothing.
But by the same reasoning, Leibniz concludes there are no vacuums in
the actual world: more is better than less.



Leibniz also targets the possibility of there being more than one
void. If there could be more than one void, then there could be two
voids of exactly the same shape and size. These two voids would be
perfect twins; everything true of one void would be true of the other.
This is precluded by the principle of the identity of indiscernibles:
if everything true of *x* is true of *y*, then
*x* is identical to *y*.



A second problem with multiple voids arises from efforts to paraphrase
them away. From the time of Melissus, there have been arguments
against the possibility of a void existing in the manner that an
object exists: "Nor is there any void, for void is nothing, and
nothing cannot be." (Guthrie 1965, 104) If you say there is a
vacuum in the flask, then you are affirming the existence of something
in the flask--the vacuum. But since 'vacuum' means an
absence of something, you are also denying that there is something in
the flask. Therefore, 'There is a vacuum in the flask' is
a contradiction.



Some react to Melissus's argument by analyzing vacuums as
properties of things rather than things in their own right. According
to C. J. F. Williams (1984, 383), 'There is a vacuum in the
flask' should be rendered as 'The flask noths'. He
does this in the same spirit that he renders 'There is fog in
Winchester' as 'Winchester is foggy' and
'There is a smell in the basement' as 'The basement
smells'.



If this paraphrase strategy works for vacuums, it ought to work for
the more prosaic case of holes. Can a materialist believe that there
are holes in his Swiss cheese? The holes are where the matter is not.
So to admit the existence of holes is to admit the existence of
immaterial objects!



One response is to paraphrase 'There is a hole in the
cheese' as 'The cheese holes' or, to be a bit easier
on the ear, as 'The cheese is perforated'. What appeared
to be a wild existential claim has been domesticated into a comment on
the shape of the cheese.



But how are we to distinguish between the cheese having two holes as
opposed to one? (Lewis and Lewis 1983, 4) Well, some cheese is singly
perforated, some cheese is doubly-perforated, yet other cheese is
*n*-perforated where *n* equals the number of holes in
the cheese.



Whoa! We must be careful not to define
'*n*-perforation' in terms of holes; that would
re-introduce the holes we set out to avoid.



Can holes be evaded by confining ourselves to the *process* of
perforation? Single-hole punchers differ from triple-hole punchers by
how they act; singlely rather than triply.



The difficulty with this process-oriented proposal that the product, a
hole, is needed to distinguish between successful and merely attempted
perforation. Furthermore, the paraphrase is incomplete because it does
not extend to holes that arise from processes such as looping. If the
universe popped into existence five minutes ago, then most holes
formed without any process.



Can we just leave expressions of the form
'*n*-perforated' as primitive, unanalyzed shape
predicates? David and Stephanie Lewis (1983) note that this strands us
with an infinite list of primitive terms. Such a list could never have
been memorized. The Lewises do not see how
'*n*-perforated' can be recursively defined without
alluding to holes.



The paraphrase prospects seem equally bleak for being
'*n*-vacuumed'. Big meteorites pass through the
atmosphere in about one second leaving a hole in the
atmosphere--a vacuum in "thin air". The air cannot
rush in quickly enough to fill the gap. This explains why rock vapor
from the impact launches back up into the atmosphere and later rains
down widely on the surface. During a meteorite shower, the atmosphere
is multiply vacuumed. But this is just to say that there are many
vacuums in the atmosphere.


## 10. Is there *any* nothingness?



The trouble sustaining multiple voids may push us to the most extreme
answer to 'Why is there something rather than nothing?',
namely, 'There must not only be something but there must not be
any emptiness at all!'.



Parmenides maintained that it is self-defeating to say that something
does not exist. The linguistic rendering of this insight is the
problem of negative existentials: 'Atlantis does not
exist' is about Atlantis. A statement can be about something
only if that something exists. No relation without relata! Therefore,
'Atlantis does not exist' cannot be true. Parmenides and
his disciples elaborated conceptual difficulties with negation into an
incredible metaphysical monolith.



The Parmenideans were opposed by the atomists. The atomists said that
the world is constituted by simple, indivisible things moving in empty
space. They self-consciously endorsed the void to explain empirical
phenomena such as movement, compression, and absorption.



Parmenides's disciple, Zeno of Elea, had already amassed an
amazing battery of arguments to show motion is impossible. Since these
imply that compression and absorption are also impossible, Zeno
rejects the data of the atomists just as physicists reject the data of
parapsychologists.



Less radical opponents of vacuums, such as Aristotle, re-explained the
data within a framework of plenism: although the universe is full,
objects can move because other objects get out of the way. Compression
and absorption can be accommodated by having things pushed out of the
way when other things jostle their way in.



In the *Timaeus*, Aristotle's teacher Plato attempted to
combine atomism with plenism as a "likely story". The
atoms are the Platonic solids (regular, convex polyhedra), each having
a distinctive role in the composition of objects. Aristotle objects
that the Platonic solids cannot fill space. Every arrangement of
Platonic solids yields the sort of gaps that one can more readily
predict in a universe composed solely of spherical atoms.



Aristotle agrees that atoms could fill space if they were all cubes.
Pressing his luck, Aristotle goes on to claim that tetrahedra can also
complete space. It is testament to Aristotle's subsequent
authority that this claim was accepted for seventeen hundred
years--despite being easily refutable by anyone trying to snugly
combine tetrahedral blocks. Almost any choice of shapes guarantees
interstitial vacua. This geometrical pressure for tiny vacua creates a
precedent for the cosmic void (which surrounds the material cosmos)
and the intermediate empty spaces that provide a promising explanation
of how motion is possible.



Yet Aristotle denied the void can explain how things move. Movement
requires a mover that is pushing or pulling the object. An object in a
vacuum is not in contact with anything else. If the object did move,
there would be nothing to impede its motion. Therefore, any motion in
a vacuum would be at an unlimited speed. This conflicts with the
principle that no object can be in two separate places at the same
time.



Aristotle's refutation of the void persuaded most commentators
for the next 1500 years. There were two limited dissenters to his
thesis that vacuums are impossible. The Stoics agreed that terrestrial
vacuums are impossible but believed there must be a void surrounding
the cosmos. Hero of Alexandria agreed that there are no naturally
occurring vacuums but believed that they can be formed artificially.
He cites pumps and siphons as evidence that voids can be created. Hero
believed that bodies have a natural horror of vacuums and struggle to
prevent their formation. You can feel the antipathy by trying to open
a bellows that has had its air hole plugged. Try as you might, you
cannot separate the sides. However, unlike Aristotle, Hero thought
that if you and the bellows were tremendously strong, you could
separate the sides and *create* a vacuum.



Hero's views became more discussed after the Church's
anti-Aristotelian condemnation of 1277 which required Christian
scholars to allow for the possibility of a vacuum. The immediate
motive was to preserve God's omnipotence. God could have chosen
to create the world in a different spot. He could have made it bigger
or smaller. God could have also chosen to make the universe a
different shape. These possibilities entail the possibility of a
vacuum.



A second motivation is a literal reading of Genesis 1:1. This opening
passage of the Bible describes God as creating the world from nothing.
Such a construction seems logically impossible. Commitment to an
illogical miracle jeopardized the Christian's overarching
commitment to avoid outright irrationality. If creation out of nothing
were indeed a demonstrable impossibility, then faith would be forced
to override an answer given by reason rather than merely answer a
question about which reason is silent.



All Greek philosophy had presupposed creation was from something more
primitive, not nothing. Consistently, the Greeks assumed destruction
was disassembly into more basic units. (If destruction into
nothingness were possible, the process could be reversed to get
creation from nothing.) The Christians were on their own when trying
to make sense of creation from nothing. (Ancient Chinese philosophers
are sometimes translated as parallel believers in creation from
nothing. JeeLoo Liu (2014) cautions that both the Daoist and
Confucians are speaking about formlessness rather than
nothingness.)



Creation out of nothing presupposes the possibility of total
nothingness. This in turn implies that there can be some nothingness.
Thus Christians had a motive to first establish the possibility of a
little nothingness. Their strategy was to start small and scale
up.Accordingly, scholars writing in the aftermath of the condemnation
of 1277 proposed various recipes for creating vacuums (Schmitt 1967).
One scheme was to freeze a sphere filled with water. After the water
contracted into ice, a vacuum would form at the top.Aristotelians
replied that the sphere would bend at its weakest point. When the
vacuists stipulated that the sphere was perfect, the rejoinder was
that this would simply prevent the water from turning into ice.



Neither side appears to have tried out the recipe. If either had, then
they would have discovered that freezing water expands rather than
contracts. To contemporary thinkers, this dearth of empirical testing
is bizarre. The puzzle is intensified by the fact that the medievals
did empirically test many hypotheses, especially in optics.



Hero was eventually refuted by experiments conducted by Evangelista
Torricelli and Blaise Pascal. In effect, they created a barometer
consisting of a tube partially submerged, upside down, in bowl of
mercury. What keeps the mercury suspended in the tube? Is there an
unnatural vacuum that causes the surrounding glass to pull the liquid
up? Or is there no vacuum at all but rather some rarefied and
invisible matter in the "empty space"? Pascal answered
that there really was nothing holding up the mercury. The mercury
rises and falls due to variations in the weight of the atmosphere. The
mercury is being *pushed* up the tube, not pulled up by
anything.



When Pascal offered this explanation, Descartes wrote Christian
Huygens (8 December 1647) that the hasty young man had the vacuum too
much on his mind. (A more amusing translation of the letter has
Descartes complaining that Pascal had too much vacuum in his head;
alas, Descartes' writing loses something in the original.)
Descartes identified bodies with extension and so had no room for
vacuums. If there were nothing between two objects, then they would be
touching each other. And if they are touching each other, there is no
gap between them.



Well maybe the apparent gap is merely a thinly occupied region of
space. On this distributional model, there is no intermediate
"empty object" that separates the two objects. There is
merely unevenly spread matter. This model is very good at eliminating
vacuums in the sense of empty objects. However, it is also rather good
at eliminating ordinary objects. What we call objects would just be
relatively thick deposits of matter. There would be only one natural
object: the whole universe. This may have been the point of
Spinoza's attack on vacuums (Bennett 1980). (Indian philosophers
associate nothingness with lack of differentiation. They may prefer to
describe Spinoza's world as a realm of nothingness dominated by
a single overarching unity.)



Descartes was part of a tradition that denied action at a distance.
This orthodoxy included Galileo. He was distressed by Johannes
Kepler's hypothesis that the moon influences the tides because
the hypothesis seems to require causal chains in empty space. How
could the great Kepler believe something so silly? After Isaac Newton
resurrected Kepler's hypothesis he eventually capitulated to
orthodoxy and stuffed the space between the moon and the Earth with
ether.



Indeed, the universality of Newton's law of gravitation seems to
require that the whole universe be filled with a subtle substance. How
else could the universe be bound together by causal chains? Hunger for
ether intensified as the wave-like features of light became
established. It is tautologous that a wave must have a medium.



Or is it? As the theoretical roles of the ether proliferated,
physicists began to doubt there could be anything that accomplished
such diverse feats. These doubts about the existence of ether were
intensified by the emergence of Einstein's theory of relativity.
He presented his theory as a relational account of space; if there
were no objects, there would be no space. Space is merely a useful
abstraction.



Even those physicists who wished to retain substantival space broke
with the atomist tradition of assigning virtually no properties to the
void. They re-assign much of ether's responsibilities to space
itself. Instead of having gravitational forces being propagated
through the ether, they suggest that space is bent by mass. To explain
how space can be finite and yet unbounded, they characterize space as
spherical. When Edwin Hubble discovered that heavenly bodies are
traveling away from each other (like ants resting on an expanding
balloon), cosmologists were quick to suggest that space may be
expanding. "Expanding into what?" wondered bewildered
laymen, "How can space bend?", "How can space have a
shape?", ....



Historians of science wonder whether the ether that was loudly pushed
out the front door of physics is quietly returning through the back
door under the guise of "space" (Kuhn 1962, 109). Quantum
field theory provides especially fertile ground for such speculation.
Particles are created with the help of energy present in
"vacuums". To say that vacuums have energy and energy is
convertible into mass, is to deny that vacuums are empty. Many
physicists revel in the discovery that vacuums are far from empty.



Frank Wilczek (1980), Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (2010, 180)
as well as Lawrence Krauss (2012) explicitly claim that this answers
the question of why there is something rather than nothing. The basic
idea goes back to an issue raised by the symmetry of matter and
anti-matter. Given that the symmetry implies equality, matter and
anti-matter should have annihiliated each other. Creation should have
been aborted. Why is there NOW something (particles) rather than
nothing (mere energy in a quantum field)? This question was answered
by calculations suggesting that there was about a billionth more
matter than anti-matter. Although it is still possible for the
universe to be without particles, the slight numeric imbalance biases
the universe toward states in which there are many particles. A small
random change can trigger a phase transition analogous to the
transformation of very cold liquid beer into solid beer when the cap
of the bottle is popped (suddenly reducing the pressure in the
bottle).



A proud physicist is naturally tempted to announce these insights
through the bullhorn of metaphysics. But philosophers interested in
the logic of questions will draw attention to the role of emphasis in
framing requests for explanations. 'Why did *Eve* eat the
apple?', 'Why did Eve *eat* the apple?', and
'Why did Eve eat the *apple*?' are different
questions because they specify different contrast classes (van
Fraassen 1980, 127-130). Philosophers read 'Why is there
something rather than nothing?' tenselessly as in 'Why is
p an irrational number?'. The philosophers also read
'something' as a quantifier ranging over any concrete
entity. The quantum vacuum is a concrete entity (in the sense
described in sections 4 and 7) and so is in the philosopher's
domain of discourse. But for rhetorical effect, physicists
anachronistically back-date their domain of discourse to the things of
nineteenth century physics. Thus the physicists wind up addressing
'Why *is* there some *thing* rather than
nothing?'.



Philosophers complain of misleading advertising. They asked one
question and the proud physicists answered a different question.
Lawrence Krauss defends the switch as an improvement. Often scientists
make progress by altering the meaning of key terms. Why stick with an
intractable (and arguably meaningless) question? We should wriggle
free from the dead hand of the past and rejuvenate our curiosity with
the vocabulary of contemporary cosmology.



The physicist turned philosopher, Rudolf Carnap (1950), recalls how
thermodynamicists *explicated* "heat" into the more
precise concepts of temperature, thermal energy, and heat transfer.
Although the new terms are not synonymous with the old, they bear
enough similarity to disarm the objection that the physicists are
merely changing the topic. Our questions, like our children, can
mature without losing their identity over time. (The idea of there
being two different questions being asked is pursued in Carroll 2012,
Other Internet Resources.)



David Albert is open to the possibility of old questions being
improved by new interests and discoveries. However, he denies that
Lawrence Krauss's particular change of meaning constitutes an
improvement (2012, Other Internet Resources):



> 
> Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states--no less
> than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems--are particular
> arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true
> relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical equivalent to there not being
> any physical stuff at all isn't this or that particular
> arrangement of the fields--what it is (obviously, and
> ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple *absence* of
> the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to
> correspond to the existence of particles and some don't is not a
> whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible
> arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a
> fist and some don't. And the fact that particles can pop in and
> out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is
> not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out
> of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none
> of these poppings--if you look at them aright--amount to
> anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.
> 


## 11. Phenomenological aspects of nothingness



After a mystical experience in 1654, Blaise Pascal's interest in
nothingness passed from its significance to science to the
significance of nothingness to the human condition. Pascal thinks
human beings have a unique perspective on their finitude. His
*Pensees* is a roller coaster ride surveying the human
lot. Pascal elevates us to the level of angels by exalting in our
grasp of the infinite, and then runs us down below the beasts for
wittingly choosing evil over goodness. From this valley of depravity
Pascal takes us up again by marveling at how human beings tower over
the microscopic kingdom, only to plunge us down toward insignificance
by having us dwell on the vastness of space, and the immensity of
eternity.



> 
> He who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and
> observing himself sustained in the body given him by nature between
> those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the
> sight of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes
> into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in
> silence than to examine them with presumption.
> 
> 
> 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. Since he 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. (*Pensees* sect.
> II, 72)
> 
> 
> 



Pascal's association of nothingness with insignificance and
meaninglessness was amplified by the Romantics. Their poetry
de-emphasized salvation, seeking to immerse the reader in a raw
apprehension of nature, unmediated by reason. Kant further obscured
God by casting Him into the noumenal abyss, available only through
practical faith rather than theoretical reason.



As among the first forthright atheists, Arthur Schopenhauer faced the
full force of 'Why is there something rather than
nothing?'. According to Schopenhauer, religion and rationalism
aim to reassure us that the universe has a design. Our astonishment
that there is anything betrays awareness that it is all a meaningless
accident.



Readers of Schopenhauer were presented with the awesome contingency as
an actuality rather than a terrible possibility. The experience
captured the attention of William James (who experimented with nitrous
oxide to understand the oceanic philosophy of Georg Hegel and, in
1882, published this phenomenological investigation in *Mind*).
James provides a simple recipe for eliciting the emotion:



> 
> 
> One need only shut oneself in a closet and begin to think of the fact
> of one's being there, of one's queer bodily shape in the
> darkness ... of one's fantastic character and all, to have
> the wonder steal over the detail as much as over the general fact of
> being, and to see that it is only familiarity that blunts it. Not only
> that *anything* should be, but that *this* very thing
> should be, is mysterious! (1911, 39)
> 
> 
> 



Another emotional reader of Schopenhauer, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
characterizes this unsettling phenomenology as exhausting the thrust
of the riddle of existence. Instead of expressing a well-formed
question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is
a brute expression of awe.



> 
> 
> 6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that
> it exists.
> 
> 
> 
> 6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a
> whole--as a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited
> whole--it is this that is mystical.
> 
> 
> 
> 6.5 When an answer cannot be put into words, neither can the
> question--the riddle does not exist. (From Tractatus
> Logico-Philosophicus)
> 
> 
> 



This visceral characterization persists into Wittgenstein's
later philosophy. In *Lectures on Ethics*, Wittgenstein uses
the language of seeing-as. 'Why is there something rather than
nothing?' is a prompt to see the world as a miracle. This
gestalt switch is not a mistake. Nor is it an insight. Even the
logical positivists were willing to grant the question has emotive
meaning (just not cognitive meaning).



The characteristic phenomenology of the question has also been
suggested as a resource in explaining why we fail to recognize the
radical ambiguity of the question. Andrew Brenner (2016, 1319)
conjectures that the multiplicity of interpretations is masked by the
emotional unity.



Thinkers in the tradition of Phenomenology retained
Schopenhauer's conviction that the emotion harbors a
metaphysical insight. Instead of tossing the question into the
emotivist waste basket, like the logical positivists, or lapsing into
quietism, like Wittgenstein, existentialists provide detailed
treatments of the awe expressed by the ultimate question. They built
on Schopenhauer's literary approach to philosophy, depicting the
emotion in plays and novels such as Jean-Paul Sartre's
*Nausea*. Like the arch-pessimist Schopenhauer, Sartre's
protagonist experiences our crowded world as *de trop*,
over-stuffed with accidental beings. Sartre himself, after an
unpleasant experiment with mescaline, was chronically creeped out by
the country-side vegetation edging its way into Paris.



In *The Concept of Dread*, Soren Kierkegaard (1844)
claims that nothingness wells up into our awareness through moods and
emotions. Emotions are intentional states; they are directed toward
something. If angered, I am angry *at* something. If amused,
there is something I find amusing. Free floating anxiety is often
cited as a counterexample. But Kierkegaard says that in this case the
emotion is directed at nothingness.



According to Heidegger, we have several motives to shy away from the
significance of our emotional encounters with nothingness. They are
premonitions of the nothingness of death. They echo the groundlessness
of human existence.



Some have hoped that our recognition of our rootlessness would rescue
meaning from the chaos of nothing. But Heidegger denies us such
solace.



Heidegger does think freedom is rooted in nothingness. He also says we
derive our concept of logical negation from this experience of
nothing. This suggests a privileged perspective for human beings. We
differ from animals with respect to nothing.


## 12. Animal Cognition of Absences



Since Heidegger thinks that animals do not experience nothingness, he
is committed to skepticism about animal reasoning involving negation.
Consider the Stoic example of a dog that is following a trail. The dog
reaches a fork in the road, sniffs at one road and then, without a
further sniff, proceeds down the only remaining road. The Stoics took
this as evidence that the dog has performed a disjunctive syllogism:
"Either my quarry went down this road or that road.
Sniff--he did *not* go down this road. Therefore, he went
down that road." Heidegger must discount this as
anthropomorphism.



Many biologists and psychologists side with the Stoic's emphasis
on our continuity with animals. They deny that human beings have a
monopoly on nothingness. A classic anomaly for the stimulus-response
behaviorist was the laboratory rat that responds to the absence of a
stimulus:



> 
> One rather puzzling class of situations which elicit fear are those
> which consist of a *lack* of stimulation. Some members of this
> class may be special instances of novelty. An anesthetised chimpanzee
> could be described as a normal chimpanzee with the added novelty of
> 'no movement'; solitude could be the novelty of 'no
> companions'. This is not simply quibbling with words; for there
> is very good evidence (see Chapter 13) that the failure of a stimulus
> to occur at a point in time or space where it usually occurs acts like
> any other kind of novel stimulus. However, the intensity of the fear
> evoked by the sight of a dead or mutilated body is so much greater
> than that evoked by more ordinary forms of novelty that we perhaps
> ought to seek an alternative explanation of the effects of this
> stimulus. Fear of the dark is also difficult to account for in terms
> of novelty, since by the time this fear matures darkness is no less
> familiar than the light. (Gray 1987, 22)
> 



These anomalies for behaviorism fill rationalists with mixed emotions.
On the one hand, the experiments refute the empiricist principle that
everything known about the world is learned from experience. On the
other hand, the experiments also constitute a caution against
over-intellectualizing absences. A correct explanation of emotional
engagement with absences must be more general and cognitively less
demanding than rationalists tend to presuppose. Even mosquito larvae
see shadows. Doubts about whether they have consciousness do not make
us doubt that they see shadows. So the perception of absences cannot
depend on consciousness or any other advanced mental state. Perhaps
the earliest form of vision was of these absences of light. So instead
of being a pinnacle of intellectual sophistication, cognition of
absences may be primal.



Existentialists endorse the high standards assumed by rationalists.
Their disagreement with the rationalists is over whether the standards
are met. The existentialists are disappointed by the contrast between
our expectations of how reality ought to behave and how it in fact
performs.



This sense of absurdity makes existentialists more accepting of
paradoxes than rationalists. Whereas rationalists nervously view
paradoxes as a challenge to the authority of reason, existentialists
welcome them as opportunities to correct unrealistic hopes.
Existentialists are fond of ironies and do not withdraw reflexively
from the pain of contradiction. They Stoically introspect upon the
inconsistency in the hope of achieving a resolution that does justice
to the three dimensionality of deep philosophical problems. For
instance, Heidegger is sensitive to the hazards of saying that nothing
exists. Like an electrician who must twist and bend a wire to make it
travel through an intricate hole, the metaphysician must twist and
bend a sentence to probe deeply into the nature of being.



Rudolf Carnap thinks Heidegger's contorted sentences
malfunction. To illustrate, Carnap quotes snippets from
Heidegger's *What is Metaphysics?*:



> 
> What is to be investigated is being only and--nothing else; being
> alone and further--nothing; solely being, and beyond
> being-nothing. What about this Nothing? ... Does the Nothing
> exist only because the Not, i.e. the Negation, exists? Or is it the
> other way around? Does Negation and the Not exist only because the
> Nothing exists? ... We assert: the Nothing is prior to the Not
> and the Negation.... Where do we seek the Nothing? How do we find
> the Nothing.... We know the Nothing.... Anxiety reveals the
> Nothing.... That for which and because of which we were anxious,
> was 'really'--nothing. Indeed: the Nothing
> itself--as such--was present.... What about this
> Nothing?--The Nothing itself nothings. (Heidegger as
> "quoted" by Carnap 1932, 69)
> 



This paragraph, especially the last sentence, became notorious as a
specimen of metaphysical nonsense.



The confusion caused by Heidegger's linguistic contortions is
exacerbated by separating them from their original text and herding
them into a crowded pen. There is a difference between a failure to
understand and an understanding of failure. The real test for whether
Heidegger's sentences are meaningless is to see what can be made
of them in action, applied to the questions they were designed to
answer.



Carnap also needs to consider the possibility that Heidegger's
sentences are illuminating nonsense. After all, Carnap was patient
with the cryptic Wittgenstein. In the *Tractatus*, Wittgenstein
speaks like an oracle. He even characterized his carefully enumerated
sentences as rungs in a ladder that must be cast away after we have
made the ascent and achieved an ineffable insight. And Wittgenstein
meant it, quitting philosophy to serve as a lowly schoolmaster in a
rural village.



Other critics deny that *What is Metaphysics?* suffers from an
absence of meaning. Just the reverse: they think Heidegger's
passages about nothing involve *too many* meanings. When
Heidegger connects negation with nothingness and death, these
logicians are put in mind of an epitaph that toys with the principle
of excluded middle: *Mrs Nott was Nott Alive and is Nott Dead*.
According to these critics, Heidegger's writings can only be
understood in the way we understand the solution to equivocal
riddles:



> 
> What does a man love more than life?
>   
> 
> Hate more than death or mortal strife?
>   
> 
> That which contented men desire,
>   
> 
> The poor have, the rich require,
>   
> 
> The miser spends, the spendthrift saves,
>   
> 
> And all men carry to their graves?
> 
> 
> (Leeming, 1953, 201)
> 
> 
> 



The answer, *Nothing*, can only be seen through a kaleidoscope
of equivocations.



Some of the attempts to answer 'Why is there something rather
than nothing?' equivocate or lapse into meaninglessness. The
comedic effect of such errors is magnified by the fundamentality of
the question. Error here comes off as pretentious error.



Those who ask the question 'Why is there something rather than
nothing?' commonly get confused. But the question itself appears
to survive tests for being merely a verbal confusion.



In any case, the question (or pseudo-question) has helped to hone the
diagnostic tools that have been applied to it. As the issue gets
shaped and re-shaped by advances in our understanding of
'is', quantification and explanatory standards, it becomes
evident that the value of these diagnostic tools is not exhausted by
their service in exposing pseudo-questions. For genuine questions
become better understood when we can discriminate them from their
spurious look-alikes.