A review of Sean Carroll's The Big Picture: Part III

Let us continue our review of physicist Sean Carroll's book The Big Picture. In this installment of the review I will be focusing mostly on the section of the book labeled Essence, however, let it be noted that I will also be surveying material from other sections as they seem to fit with many of the topics under discussion presently -- also some material from this section in the book will be held-over and reviewed in the subsequent installment -- mostly that which deals with the philosophy of mind.

In this section of the book Carroll delves into how he believes the world works according to Core Theory and quantum mechanics. He uses these determinations as a springboard into discussing why the universe exists, and how God fits into this picture, or doesn't, as well as the discussion regarding whether there is a soul, and whether or not life will continue after death.

Abducting or deducting God?
Carroll begins to consider worldviews that would oppose his "poetic naturalism" -- one such worldview being that of theism. And what happens when we are confronted with two opposing ontologies that are situated on the same domain? Well, for Carroll it's the method of Bayesian reasoning and abductive logic all the way:

[F]or purposes of this discussion let's imagine that the prior credences for theism and atheism are about equal. Then all the heavy lifting will be done by the likelihoods -- how well the two ideas do in accounting for the world we actually see. (p. 146)

So Carroll's plan is to look at the world and attempt to determine which ontology provides the best explanation for what we see, or don't see. We see evil in the world, then that scores points for atheism. We see consciousness in the world, chalk up a point for theism. Etc.

This might seem a good way to go about inferring which worldview is most reasonable to assume, but I maintain that's it's completely wrongheaded in this instance. First, as I mentioned in one of the previous reviews, abductive (Bayesian) reasoning is not the only kind of reasoning, and more importantly it's not the best kind of reasoning that should be utilized in this discussion. In everyday life and scientific reasoning, abduction is your best friend. If you're a scientist and you find that the liquid in a test tube has changed color, you use inference to the best explanation, plain and simple. But if you're attempting to determine whether the square root of two is a rational or an irrational number, abduction is the wrong tool to use -- you need deduction.

So, why then, should we use deduction when determining whether theism or atheism is true, and not pure abduction, as Carroll would have us do? Well, it comes down to who has the burden of proof: the theist. The theist is saying that there is in fact some positive reality that exists, and it is their burden to prove this. And how do they usually go about attempting to prove it? Through (mostly)logical deduction -- at least that's how the classical theists did it before Paley. [1] Thus, when weighing theism vs atheism, one needs to take the arguments that are being given by theists, which are deductive in nature, and determine whether they hold any merit. Appealing purely to abduction won't do any good, just like appealing to abduction to argue that the square root of two is rational will not be entertained by any mathematician. Contrary to Carroll, the heavy lifting is not done by likelihoods, but by deduction.

The point is that if theistic deductions are valid and sound then no amount of abductive inference will call this into question. And thus what needs to be determined is precisely the matter of if theistic deductions are indeed valid and sound or not -- which, again, is a job of deductive inference.

The more important point is that there are simply some beliefs that are so fundamental and metaphysical that a pragmatic method simply cannot comment on. Like it or not, abduction won't solve the realism/skepticism debate. It won't solve the free will/determinism debate. And it certainly will not solve the theism/atheism debate. Carroll wants to use a screwdriver for every job, when some jobs require a sledgehammer.

Whence the universe?
Carroll commits a whole chapter to exploring the question of why the universe exists, and why there is something rather than nothing. He begins by contemplating the answer of a necessary being in that of God but quickly casts it aside:

Poetic naturalists don't like to talk about necessities when it comes to the universe. They prefer to lay all the options out on the table, then try to figure out what our credences should be in each of them. (p. 196)

First, it's irrelevant that poetic naturalists like Carroll "don't like" to talk about necessities when it comes to the universe. The relevant question is whether talk of necessity is appropriate when it comes to questions of fundamental metaphysics -- of which existential questions like "why is there something rather than nothing?" are a subset -- and surely it is. So, the fact that Carroll is allergic to necessity/contingency talk is not sufficient to cast that talk aside as if it were irrelevant -- and neither has Carroll given any warrant for doing so.

Second, and more importantly, the question being dealt with here is, again, of a significant metaphysical stature, and I don't see that abduction is the right tool to use here. When asking why there is something rather than nothing, what's really being asked is why existence should ontologically precede a complete lack of existence, and this is a deeply metaphysical question in nature, which most likely will have to yield to some type of existential necessity or brute fact -- if you believe in such nonsense. And the fact of the matter is that delving into the nature of existence is commonly a deductive, and not an abductive, endeavor. Thus, the poetic naturalist way of going about answering this detective story is already wrong-headed to begin with.

Nevertheless, let's see the blueprints that Carroll lays out to proceed in answering this question:

Let's start with the relatively straightforward, science-oriented question: could the universe exist all by itself, or does it need something to bring it into existence? [...] All we want to know is "Is the existence of the universe compatible with unbroken laws of nature, or do we need to look beyond those laws in order to account for it?" (p. 196-197)

These are very relevant and important questions to our current inquiry. Carroll attempts to answer these questions by turning to science to settle the debate regarding whether or not the universe had a beginning -- his answer eventually terminating in a modest "we don't know."

The problem here, though, again stems from the fact that Carroll is ignorant to the fact that these are simply not the questions that science can answer in the first place -- "these" questions being the original questions he posed. For even if we could mathematically describe our universe as self-sustaining or existing by itself, this wouldn't actually make any progress in answering the existential question. For science only describes the behavior of that which already naturally exists, and it cannot tell you why the universe behaves in that way in the first place, or why it behaves this way as opposed to another way. To put it in a different vein, in order to have a behavior to describe you first need something which exists and does the behaving, and this means that existence is ontologically prior to behavior. Therefore, no description of behavior (which is all that science is) is sufficient to explain the existence of what does the behaving, and thus, science cannot in principle answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Sorry Carroll.

What this also entails, once again, is that Carroll is looking for an answer to the existential question utilizing the wrong tools. Since science cannot aid us in determining why something exists rather than nothing then it is irrelevant, to say the least, when it comes to this particular question -- sorry Lawrence Krauss.

However, Carroll is prepared (or so he thinks) to take on this line of thought:

For questions like this, however, the scientific answer doesn't always satisfy everyone. "Okay," they might say, "we understand that there can be a physical theory that describes a self-contained universe, without any external agent bringing it about or sustaining it. But that doesn't explain why it actually does exist. For that, we have to look outside science." (p. 201)

Yes, this is exactly what I would say. Let's see how Carroll is going to set me straight:

Sometimes this angle of attack appeals to fundamental metaphysical principles, which are purportedly more foundational even than the laws of physics, and cannot be sensibly denied. In particular, the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides put forward the famous maxim ex nihilo, nihil fit -- "out of nothing, nothing comes." [...] According to this line of thought, it doesn't matter if physicists can cook up self-contained theories in which the cosmos has a first moment of time; those theories must necessarily be incomplete since they violate this cherished principle.

 This is perhaps the most egregious example of begging the question in the history of the universe. We are asking whether the universe could come into existence without anything causing it. The response is "No, because nothing comes into existence without being caused." How do we know that? It can't be because we have never seen it happen; the universe is different from the various things inside the universe that we have actually experienced in our lives. And it can't be because we can't imagine it happening or because it's impossible to construct sensible models in which it happens, since both the imagining and the construction of models have manifestly happened.  (p. 201-202)

Alright, there's a lot to unpack here. First, notice that Carroll has actually side-stepped the original point that he was claiming to address -- namely, that talk of scientific models doesn't actually address the question of why something exists in the first place. (Note that he does later on say that we may never know why the universe exists, and that its existence might simply be a brute fact. You know what my response is.)

Second, to appeal to fundamental metaphysical principles to call scientific models into question, or to highlight their incompleteness, is not to beg the question. For these principles are seen, by those promulgating them, as necessary conditions of reality; that is, they're seen as conditions that hold in any possible world and are the things that even make science possible in the first place. Thus, to claim that a scientific model cannot overthrow them is not to beg the question. It would beg the question if the individual promulgating said principles had no justification for their necessity. But this would have to be demonstrated by the likes of Carroll, which, to give him credit, he does attempt to do, which brings me to my next, and third, point.

Carroll asks a good question: how does one know that metaphysical principles like the law of causality are immutable? The answer is that we know this because those very propositions are formed through relations of concepts that we abstract from reality, which, as we saw in the last post, we must have objective knowledge of -- on pain of contradiction. Another way to put it is that our knowledge is dictated by reality, and not the other way around, and thus the reason why we know that principles like the law of causality are immutable is because these principles are themselves grounded in the objective nature of reality. [2]

Fourth, it is actually Carroll who begs the question here, though he does it so well that it's hard to catch. To revisit my first point above, he claims that to address the fact that scientific models don't answer the "Why?" of existence, individuals sometimes resort to metaphysical principles. But how does he argue against these principles? By appealing to the very physical models of the universe he already utilized and was questioned on! That is to say, based off of Carroll's argumentation, we could construct the following conversation:

Carroll: We can easily construct physical models of the universe which are self-sustaining.

Me: But those models are purely descriptive and incomplete, and don't answer why something exists in the first place.

Carroll: Where are we to look for this "Why?"

Me: To metaphysical principles like "that which is moved from potency to act is moved by that which is already actual."

Carroll: But this principle is false, since we have already constructed physical models which are self-sustaining.

Round and round we go. Hopefully the attentive reader notices that Carroll would simply keep begging the question regarding his self-sustaining physical models.

Furthermore, the more crucial point is that since science is only quantitatively based, it does not, in its equations, capture notions of causality -- something Carroll has articulated multiple times in the book. Therefore, even though we might be able to construct a model of reality that is self-sustaining, and self-contained, as far as physics is concerned, this does not actually equate to forming a model of the universe that is not contingent upon, and not caused by, anything else. Thus, Carroll's self-sustained models are actually completely irrelevant to the current discussion.

Carroll then briefly returns to the notion of God as an answer to the existential question:

Theists think they have a better answer: God exists, and the reason why the universe exists in this particular way is because that's how God wanted it to be. Naturalists tend to find this unpersuasive: Why does God exist? But there's an answer to that, or at least an attempted one, which we already alluded to at the beginning of this chapter. The universe, according to this line of reasoning, is contingent; it didn't have to exist, and it could have been otherwise, so its existence demands an explanation. But God is a necessary being; there is no optionality about his existence, so no further explanation is required. 

Except that God isn't a necessary being, because there are no such things as necessary beings. All sorts of versions of reality are possible, some of which have entities one would reasonably identify with God, and some of which don't. We can't short-circuit the difficult task of figuring out what kind of universe we live in by relying on a priori principles. (p. 203)

Again, there's a lot to unpack here. First, I want to focus on Carroll's comments on God as a necessary being, for he's only begging the question here. He literally gives absolutely no justification or substantiation for the claim that no necessary beings exist. He hasn't even come close to attempting to do the philosophical leg-work that would warrant him in making such an audacious claim.

Second, the only semblance of an argument Carroll does give in favor of God not being a necessary being is that of the fact that we can conceive of other possible worlds where there no such God. But again, Carroll hasn't done the leg-work to demonstrate this. For if we arrive at a logical deduction of what God is, as classical theists claim we can, then by "God" we literally mean "that whose essence is to exist," which means that by definition God cannot not exist. But this entails that there actually is no world of which we can conceive where God does not exist [3], and thus Carroll is wrong.

Third, Carroll actually refutes himself here when dismissing talk of a priori principles. Remember that Carroll is big on empiricism, and believes that the only way we can have genuine knowledge is to actually look at reality -- thus, a priori philosophy is moot in his eyes. However, Carroll's point in his latter paragraph is predicated on "all sorts of versions of reality" being ontologically possible -- that is, he's employing the notion of modal logic, an a priori endeavor. How does Carroll know that reality enjoys various ontological "possibilities"? He might say, "because of the fact we can imagine them" -- he seems to say as much on page 203. But that immediately commits one to the idea that possibility is grounded in the imagination; yet how would Carroll ground that idea? That is, why does Carroll believe that our imagination is capable of telling us anything true about the nature of reality? The point here that I'm trying to make is that any answers to these questions will necessarily be founded on a priori principles, the very thing Carroll is allergic to and vehemently opposes, as we saw last review. But, were he to give his beliefs a little more thought, he'd see that he ends up falling on his own sword, as it were.

In any event, Carroll conjures up no answer to the existential question of why the universe exists in the first place; though he should not be faulted for this. What he is to be faulted for is his sloppy logic utilized to throw opposing answers, like that of theism, under the bus. And thus it doesn't seem like his poetic naturalism is properly justified.

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[1] Don't get me wrong. I know that many theists have attempted to persuade individuals that God exists by telling them to look at the stars, or the beauty that we perceive in the world etc., and this no doubt is done in the vein of abduction. But this is usually not done to satisfy one's burden of proof, at least in the sense of what we mean by "proof".

[2]Carroll also visits this idea earlier in his book on page 116 wherein he claims that "[beliefs] aren't (try as we may) founded on unimpeachable principles that can't be questioned." But this is false. If you push back on the justifications for propositions of knowledge further and further, you will arrive at a foundation of first principles that are axiomatic and, contrary to Carroll, cannot be questioned.

[3] Note that to imagine is not to conceive, in that I can conceive of something without imagining it and vice versa. Carroll constantly conflates the two throughout his book.

The principle of causality

It is no secret that causality places a central role in natural theology. That is to say, the notion of causality is central to arguments—mostly cosmological arguments—that attempt to prove the existence of God. It is because of this fact that most theologians work very hard to ground the principle of causality as an absolute. For if the principle of causality has exceptions, then natural theology will take a hit. Hence it is obvious that theologians have a vested interest in preserving the immutability of this principle. Because of this fact some, then, will claim that theists are extremely tendentious when it comes to talk of causality, and that such talk should be challenged, and put under the skeptical magnifying glass. I completely agree with this, though I do believe that the “skeptics” or non-theists can be charged with a bias as well (can’t we all?) since a denial of the principle of causality is central to their position, all things being equal.

I will not attempt to distance myself from the aforementioned theologian. I agree that the principle of causality is something that, perhaps through my own biases and wishful thinking, I am determined to defend. That being said, however, I do in fact believe that said principle is hard to deny, and I do believe that any attempt to do just that will run into absurdity and incoherence; And thus, my belief in the principle of causality is at least surely grounded in reason, and has just warrant.

It is my objective in this post to demonstrate why it has said warrant.

So, let me begin by articulating the principle of causality. The principle of causality states that whatever is moved from potentiality (potency) to actuality (act) is done so by something already actual. (Let the reader understand that the potentiality of a substance is just the potential that the substance could realize, and the actuality of a substance is just the way it currently is realized—that is, the way it currently exists or exhibits being. For instance, an acorn is actually an acorn and is potentially an oak tree, while it is not potentially a lizard.) Another way to formulate the principle is to say that whatever is changed is changed by another, since change just involves a reduction of some potency of a thing to an actualization of said potency. Thus, the glass of water on my table has the potential to be knocked over (among other things) but this potential can only become a reality--that is, it can only be actualized--if, for example, someone or something (actual) knocks it over.

Now, while one can conjure up all sorts of examples that satisfy the principle of causality, how do we know that this principle is an actual principle in the sense that it holds immutably, without exception? Well, to one who tries to deny the principle, there are only two other options: 1) a potential can actualize itself, or 2) nothing can actualize the potential. Obviously 1) is not possible because potency qua potency cannot do anything because it is not actual. In fact, the only way for it to actualize itself would be for it be actual before it is actual, which is a contradiction and an absurdity. Now, 2) is likewise absurd because nothing is, well, nothing, and nothing cannot do anything. Nothing is not actual and cannot act on anything, precisely because it is nothing--that is, because it is the absence of being. So, then by logical necessity we can see that that which is moved from potency to act must be done so by something already actual.

Another formulation of the principle of causality is that whatever begins to exist has a cause. And again, we can see that this formulation is necessarily valid. For if something comes into being, then there are only two options left over if one is to deny the principle: 1) the substance caused itself to come into being, or 2) the substance came into being from nothing. It should be obvious that these options fail for the same reasons as above. 1) is false because in order for a thing to be self-caused it would have to exist before it existed in order to cause itself to exist, which is incoherent. 2) is false because nothing cannot be a cause because nothing cannot do anything, since it is by definition the absence of anything. Thus, this formulation of the principle of causality is also necessarily valid.

So far then we have seen that the principle of causality is a metaphysically absolute principle. There simply is no logical room for any exception to said principle, for any alternative runs into absurdity and incoherence. It seems then that we can be completely certain of the validity of the principle of causality.

Why something rather than nothing? Part III

In the last part of our series regarding naturalistic answers to the question “Why there is something rather than nothing?”, we shall survey the arguments of atheist Richard Carrier. Carrier’s explicit answer to this question can be found on his blog in a post entitled Ex Nihilo Onus Merdae Fit. Carrier begins by defining what he means by nothing:

[Nothing] can only mean that nothing whatever exists except anything whose non-existence is logically impossible. That latter caveat is unavoidable for the obvious reason that if it is logically impossible for something not to exist, then there can’t have ever been a state of being where it did not exist. So if by “absolutely nothing” you mean even the non-existence of logically necessary things, then “absolutely nothing” is logically impossible, and thus there can’t ever have been “nothing” in that sense.

A few caveats here. First, when someone begins the definition of nothing with “nothing, except…” then they have already gotten off on the wrong foot. Nothing, by definition means the absence of anything, at all. Period. It does not, contrary to Carrier, mean nothing except X,Y, and Z. For then, one is indeed talking about something.

Now, obviously Carrier has reasons for this definition, which he explains in the passage following the above quote. Carrier claims that logically necessary things must, by definition, always exist, and, therefore, there cannot be a state of reality without them. Is it just me, or is this the very answer that theists give for the existential question—namely, that since God is a necessary being, absolute nothing is not a possible state of affairs.(Now, this already demonstrates how ridiculous Carrier’s definition is. For if God did exist, even by himself, then by Carrier’s definition, this would still constitute “nothing”. But, I digress.) However, Carrier obviously does not adhere to this answer—and his reasons for it are given elsewhere. So, he must be talking about some other necessary thing:

[A]ll the fundamental propositions of logic and mathematics are necessarily true[…]and therefore there can never have been a state of being in which they were false.

 Carrier is claiming, then, that the laws of logic and mathematics are these necessary things that must exist. Fair enough. While it is not clear that these laws could be predicated in a state of “nothingness”—since these laws only describe the way existence behaves—it seems harmless to allow this premise in Carrier’s argument. Carrier continues:

Now, when nothing exists (except that which is logically necessary), then anything can happen (whose happening is logically possible). Because the only way to prevent something from happening, is to have some law or force or power or object or agency, in other words some actual thing, that prevents it. If you remove all obstacles, you allow all possibilities.

This is where Carrier goes off the deep end, and subsequently where his argument collapses. He is claiming that since nothing exists (that is, nothing is actual), then there are infinite possibilities (that is, infinite potential). This is completely incoherent. Why? Because actuality is ontologically prior to potentiality—that is to say, only something already existing can have potential. For example, water has the potential to become ice, but this potential is dependent on the already existing substance, namely, that of water. This potential would not exist by itself. Yet, this is what Carrier would have us believe, namely, that a big state of “nothing” has infinite potential! (Note: this objection was brought to Carrier's attention by individuals in the comment section of Carrier's post, but his reply boiled down to exclaiming "prove it".)

Another way to think of the problem here is the following. Potentiality must be predicated of something. That is to say, for potentiality to be a predicate, you must have a subject. To say “(x) has potential” one must substitute some thing for (x). Yet, Carrier can only substitute “nothing” for (x), which renders such a proposition nonsensical. Just ask the question “What has potential?” to which the reply will be “nothing.” So, not only is Carrier’s claim here silly, it is logically incoherent.

 But, wait, Carrier’s not finished:

Therefore, in the beginning, nothing existed to prevent anything from happening or to make any one thing happening more likely than any other thing.[…] Of all the logically possible things that can happen when nothing exists to prevent them from happening, continuing to be nothing is one thing, one universe popping into existence is another thing, two universes popping into existence is yet another thing, and so on all the way to infinitely many universes popping into existence[…]Therefore, the probability of some infinite number of universes having popped into existence is infinitely close to one hundred percent.

 So, Carrier has basically argued that from “nothing”, everything comes, multiple universes and all. There are many problems with Carrier’s argument here. First, Carrier has still given no metaphysical explanation of how “nothing” can spontaneously pop into something. This is seen to be metaphysically impossible—hence the old adage “from nothing, nothing comes”. For something to go from one state (nothing) to another (something) would be for potentiality to be reduced to actuality. But, 1) we’ve already seen that potential must be a potential of some actual thing, which is not nothing, and 2) something can only be reduced from potentiality to actuality by something already actual, which, again, cannot exist in nothing; that is, potentiality cannot move itself to act because mere potential is not actual.

Thus stated, we have seen that Carrier begins his argument with a dubious definition of “nothing”. Then he tried to predicate metaphysical concepts of this “nothing”, yet, said concepts can only be coherently predicated of something, not nothing. Third, even after all this ridiculous argumentation, Carrier has given no metaphysical explanation of how this ‘nothing” can produce anything at all. Rather, it is simply flatly asserted that this “nothing” can pop into multiple universes. Taking all of this into consideration, we can see that Richard Carrier has not given a coherent and tenable answer to the existential question.

Why something rather than nothing? Part II

Let us continue our survey regarding naturalist answers to the existential question of why something exists as opposed to nothing. We will now turn our attention to esteemed physicist Sean Carroll. Carroll’s answers will be pulled from two articles he’s written (here and here) —one written as a direct answer, and the other only written as an answer indirectly--over at his blog Preposterous Universe.

 Carroll articulates his answer:

First, we would only even consider this an interesting question if there were some reasonable argument in favor of nothingness over existence.[…] Ultimately, the problem is that the question — “Why is there something rather than nothing?” — doesn’t make any sense. What kind of answer could possibly count as satisfying? What could a claim like “The most natural universe is one that doesn’t exist” possibly mean? As often happens, we are led astray by imagining that we can apply the kinds of language we use in talking about contingent pieces of the world around us to the universe as a whole. It makes sense to ask why this blog exists, rather than some other blog; but there is no external vantage point from which we can compare the relatively likelihood of different modes of existence for the universe. So the universe exists, and we know of no good reason to be surprised by that fact.

Carroll also states the following related remarks:

[T]hat’s just how things are. There is a chain of explanations concerning things that happen in the universe, which ultimately reaches to the fundamental laws of nature and stops.

The question—“Why there is something rather than nothing?”—other than: something (the universe) exists, because it just does. There is no reason why it does, since reasons are only pragmatic inside the universe, and applying them to the universe itself is superfluous.

Such modesty by Carroll is refreshing but, alas, his answers are not only unsatisfying, they are fallacious. First of all, Carroll completely misinterprets exactly what the existential question is getting at. The question is not interesting only if there were an argument in favor of nothingness. The question is interesting because the universe seems to be contingent—a point that Carroll will later admit, interestingly enough—and contingent things require something else that explains their existence. So the question is really asking “What is it that keeps the universe from being nothing at all?”

 Now Carroll’s answer is obviously unsatisfying because it amounts to saying nothing at all—e.g., “That’s just how things are.” Analogously, imagine my Calculus students asking me why the definition of a derivative involves a limit, and I answered, “there’s no reason, it just does.”  Obviously this is no answer at all, and this is tantamount to Carroll’s answer. But Carroll knows this, and further justifies his argument by claiming that the type of existential explanations we’re looking for here will only lead us to a dead end--because such explanations cannot be applied to the universe itself, since the universe “[is] not embedded in a bigger structure; it’s all there is.” So, since the universe is “all there is”, there is no framework whereby we can expect an explanation for the existence of it.

 Good answer, right? Wrong. There’s a few problems. First, Carroll is blatantly begging the question here by claiming the universe is all there is. It is not clear that the universe is all there is, and Carroll would first have to demonstrate such a proposition before he used it as an out in this discussion. It might very well be the case that there is an ontologically higher realm than the universe of which the universe participates in an explanatory chain. Thus stated, inherent in Carroll’s answer is a blatant unsubstantiated assumption of naturalism.

 Second, even if the universe were the whole shebang, this does not mean it cannot have an explanation. That is to say, the universe could be self-explanatory. You see, an explanatory chain must end somewhere, and it can only end in something that is self-explanatory, otherwise the explanations, along with the chain, continue. So Carroll is actually incorrect that our inquiry into explanations must stop with the universe itself which has no explanation. For the universe could indeed be self-explanatory, and therefore provide a much satisfying answer to our existential quandary.

 But even Carroll concedes, indirectly, that this is not the case, that is, that the universe is contingent, and therefore not self-explanatory:

[One possible reason why the universe is the way it is] is logical necessity: the laws of physics take the form they do because no other form is possible. But that can’t be right; it’s easy to think of other possible forms. The universe could be a gas of hard spheres interacting under the rules of Newtonian mechanics, or it could be a cellular automaton, or it could be a single point.

What’s crucial here is that Carroll is admitting the universe did not have to be this way—this way being the way the universe has actually been configured. But, that means that there must be a reason why the universe is this way as opposed to another possible way. Which means that the universe is contingent, since this is literally one of the definitions of contingency. But if something is contingent, then it cannot be self-explanatory, since the reason for its existence is not sought within itself.

 Thus stated, we see that Carroll’s attempt to relieve the universe of explanation has failed. He has not answered the existential question, and even where he has tried, he has only put the case for naturalism in jeopardy.

Why something rather than nothing? Part I

I’m beginning a series of posts centered on the age old existential philosophical question of “Why something exists, as opposed to nothing at all?”  I intend to survey many (different) naturalistic answers to this question, and, since I’m obviously not a naturalist, demonstrate why I believe they fall short.

I have decided to begin with the answer that is most wrong-headed and nonsensical. Unfortunately, this is a common response among naturalists and scientists today, and has been promulgated, as of late, by some of the best known contemporary naturalists. Here is a sample of common answers that lie in the same vein:

“[Nothing] should perhaps be better termed as a ‘void,’ which is what you get when you apply quantum theory to space-time itself. It’s about as nothing as nothing can be. This void can be described mathematically. It has an explicit wave function. This void is the quantum gravity equivalent of the quantum vacuum in quantum field theory.”

"[E]mpty space, which for many people is a good first example of nothing, is actually unstable. Quantum mechanics will allow particles to suddenly pop out of nothing and it doesn't violate any laws of physics. Just the known laws of quantum mechanics and relativity can produce 400 billion galaxies each containing 100 billion stars and then beyond that it turns out when you apply quantum mechanics to gravity, space itself can arise from nothing, as can time. It seems impossible but it’s completely possible and what is amazing to me is to be asked what would be the characteristics of a universe that came from nothing by laws of physics. It would be precisely the characteristics of the universe we measure."

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”

 

These answers were promulgated by physicists Victor Stenger, Lawrence Krauss, and Stephen Hawking respectively, and they all suffer from the same problem: namely, what they’re describing is not nothing. Nothing is, simply, complete non-existence, that is, the absence of anything, at all. But, according to these scientists, “nothing” (pictured at left) is unstable, empty space, governed by the laws of gravity and quantum mechanics, and has a wave function. This definition seems to satisfy these physicists because “[i]t’s about as nothing as nothing can be.”

 However, we’re not looking for as close a definition of nothing that physics can provide, rather, we’re looking for absolute nothingness. The question is why something exists rather than nothing, not why something exists rather than empty space governed by the laws of physics.

 That being said, even if we granted them their definition, they have still failed to answer the question. For the laws of physics that they have appealed to—e.g. the laws of gravity, quantum mechanics, and relativity—do not, and cannot, explain the emergence of existence. Why? Because laws only describe the nature of what already exists. The law of gravity only describes how matter behaves at certain parts of the universe. Similarly, the laws of quantum mechanics only describe how sub-atomic particles behave. Notice that you must first have matter and sub-atomic particles in order for these laws to be binding. So, obviously, you must have something before physical laws can even begin to impart explanation.

 The physicists, then, have missed the mark. They cannot even use correct semantics involved in this discussion, and even if they did, their answers presuppose the very concept they’re attempting to account for.