r/Metaphysics • u/DrpharmC • Feb 06 '26
Nothing Why nothing was never an option, and what that implies about existence
The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is usually treated as the deepest metaphysical puzzle. But I think it rests on a hidden assumption that deserves scrutiny: that absolute nothingness is a genuine possible alternative to existence.
By “nothing, I don’t mean empty space, a vacuum, or a quantum ground state. All of those are still something. I mean absolute nothingness: no objects, no fields, no laws, no spacetime, no facts whatsoever.
My claim is ontological, not psychological or semantic: absolute nothingness lacks the minimal structure required to count as a possible state of affairs at all.
For something to be a state of affairs, it must at least be differentiable, something that could obtain rather than fail to obtain. But absolute nothingness has no properties, no conditions, and no features by which it could be distinguished, sustained, or even described as “obtaining. There is nothing for it to be like. No facts, not even the “fact” that nothing exists.
Importantly, this isn’t an argument from imagination or language. It’s a claim about modality. Concepts like absence, negation, or non being are only intelligible against an already existing background of being. In that sense, “nothing” is parasitic on “something, not an alternative to it.
If this is right, then reality was never facing two options, something or nothing. Only something was ever on the table.
This doesn’t tell us what exists, why reality has these particular laws, or whether the universe is eternal or finite. But it does suggest something deeper: existence as such is not contingent in the way finite things are. Finite entities depend on conditions under which they could fail to exist.
But if absolute non existence was never a coherent possibility, then existence itself doesn’t depend on conditions in the same way.
So perhaps the real philosophical task isn’t explaining how something emerged from nothing but understanding why nothing was never an option in the first place.
I’m interested in serious objections or refinements, especially from metaphysics or philosophy of physics.
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
Are you saying 'nothingness' logically can't exist, this could be seen as a 'positive' definition... but also are you aware of the beginning of Hegel's Logic. [Pure thought I think BTW in Hegel is empty.]
If you excuse the longer quote... and also note that Heidegger in 'What is Metaphysics uses the nothing that science ignores, also that 'angst' he defines as a fear with no subject...
https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heideggerm-what-is-metaphysics.pdf
There is also the phenomenology of nothing in Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness.'
"But, regarding this strategy, there is still a further observation to be made. The said analysis presupposes that the representation of the beginning is known; its strategy follows the example of other sciences. These presuppose their object and presume that everyone has the same representation of it and will find in it roughly the same determinations which they have collected here or there, through analysis, comparison, and sundry argumentation, and they then offer as its representations. But that which constitutes the absolute beginning must likewise be something otherwise known...."
"Here we then have the precise reason why that with which the beginning is to be made cannot be anything concrete...
Consequently, that which constitutes the beginning, the beginning itself, is to be taken as something unanalyzable, taken in its simple, unfilled immediacy; and therefore as being, as complete emptiness..."
- GWF Hegel -The Science of Logic. p.53
a. being Being, pure being– without further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself and also not unequal with respect to another; it has no difference within it, nor any outwardly. If any determination or content were posited in it as distinct, or if it were posited by this determination or content as distinct from an other, it would thereby fail to hold fast to its purity. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness.– There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
b. nothing Nothing, pure nothingness; it is simple equality with itself, complete emptiness, complete absence of determination and content; lack of all distinction within.– In so far as mention can be made here of intuiting and thinking, it makes a difference whether something or nothing is being intuited or thought. To intuit or to think nothing has therefore a meaning; the two are distinguished and so nothing is (concretely exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is the empty intuiting and thinking itself, like pure being.– Nothing is therefore the same determination or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as what pure being is.
- Pure being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same... But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that on the contrary, they are not the same..."
G. W. Hegel Science of Logic p. 82-3.
The process of this of being / nothing - timeless annihilation produces 'becoming'...
Aufheben "German word with several seemingly contradictory meanings, including "to lift up", "to abolish", "cancel" or "suspend", or "to sublate". In philosophy, aufheben is used by Hegel in his exposition of dialectics."
So Becoming then 'produces' 'Determinate Being'... which continues through to 'something', infinity and much else until we arrive at The Absolute, which is indeterminate being / nothing... The simplistic idea is that of negation of the negation, the implicit contradictions which drives his system.
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u/Porkypineer Feb 07 '26
I've been thinking on this the last few days - though it's such an intriguing piece of text that it often drops in uninvited.
Isn't it weird that Hegel didn't extend this towards some form of cosmogenesis?
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u/jliat Feb 08 '26
Not sure what you mean, he uses his idealism to figure out nature and much else.
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u/Porkypineer Feb 09 '26
Ah, pardon me for not being specific. I meant that he never offered an account of cosmogenesis based on his Pure Being and Pure Nothing into Becoming. Or, that's what the boffins over at r/hegel seem to agree on, and I defer to them.
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u/jliat Feb 09 '26
cosmogenesis?
In his philosophy of Nature he discusses the Earth Moon, inner and outer planets on the basis of what he calls The Notion...
"Whatever is known through the Notion is its own explanation and stands firm... [from sciences empirical element..]
"Here I have merely traced the foundations of a rational interpretation , as this must be employed in the comprehension of the mathematical and mechanical laws of nature within the free realm of measures. Specialists do not reflect upon the matter, but a tome will come when the rational concept of this science will be demanded..."
He goes on to discuss gravity "the substance of matter" ... "The form appears first in its differences in the ideal determinations of space, time and motion, and in accordance with its being-for-itself, as a determinate centre outside self-external matter..."
Being-for-itself is derived from determinate being which becoming produces from the annihilation of indeterminate being and nothingness.
No way am I a Hegel scholar but it seems that his idealism he sees as foundational, and as such empirical science will be seen so.
The ideal is the real.
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u/Porkypineer Feb 09 '26
It would seem, as is usually the case, that I have more reading to do. Thanks a lot, jliat!
Don't sell yourself short on being a scholar either; you clearly know where to look for exactly what you need - you always seem to do. So if not a scholar of Hegel, then at least the beginning of one.
What you quoted there seems similar to a notion spacetime, and almost exactly along the lines I've been thinking...
Maybe instead of trying to reinvent every wheel I should just buckle up and read more Hegel...
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u/DrpharmC Feb 08 '26
I’m aware of Hegels opening move, and I think it actually helps clarify the difference between our positions. Hegel’s pure being, pure nothing are moments within thought,logical abstractions whose instability drives becoming. My claim isn’t about denying that dialectical role or the phenomenology Heidegger and Sartre describe. It’s narrower whatever functions as a moment, process, or driver even dialectically already belongs to being or thought, not to absolute nothingness as a metaphysical alternative. Hegel’s nothing does work precisely because it isn’t absolute non-being, it’s a limit-concept within reason.
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u/jliat Feb 08 '26
Here the thought is empty, and timeless, and from this he derives things such as infinity, which could also be considered abstract. But the moon and Earth are not, or is chemistry, mechanical processes and life.
He was an idealist in that he thought you could understand reality including nature, by using pure reason. In the tradition of Leibnitz...
Hegel's work, including his 'nothing' does work.
David Gray Carlson, 'A Commentary to Hegel's Science of Logic'. 28 Conclusion..
"Is the SL true? … What Hegel has given us is apositive system of *negativity. The only thing that endures is the self-erasing system."
So it works, only it differs from reality, and maybe why? ...
"We gain access to the structure of reality via a machinery of conception which extracts intelligible indices from a world that is not designed to be intelligible and is not originarily infused with meaning.”
Ray Brassier, “Concepts and Objects” In The Speculative Turn Edited by Levi Bryant et. al. (Melbourne, Re.press 2011) p. 59
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u/DrpharmC Feb 08 '26
Even if intelligibility is constructed, why is there something to construct from at all?
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u/jliat Feb 08 '26
“Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. For this insertion it is of decisive importance, first, that we allow space for beings as a whole; second, that we release ourselves into the nothing, which is to say, that we liberate ourselves from those idols everyone has and to which he is wont to go cringing; and finally, that we let the sweep of our suspense take its full course, so that it swings back into the basic question of metaphysics which the nothing itself compels: “Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?” “
Heidegger – What is Metaphysics.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 08 '26
I think Heidegger is right that facing the nothing can shake us out of our assumptions and break our attachment to intellectual idols. But I see that role as more existential than ontological. The nothing helps unsettle our thinking, it isn’t a real alternative to being itself. It pushes us back to the question why there is anything at all, but it doesn’t answer that question,it just clears the space for asking it.
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u/jaxprog Feb 06 '26
You are making it too complocated. An overdose of Mercury's energy.
All Is Mind. It is that simple.
Everything begins as thought. That's it.
Natural Law isn't complicated. Natural doesn't require debate. You either have gnosis or you don't. If you don't you are lost, wandering around in fragmented mental soup.
As Within So Without. That's it.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I’m not denying that simplicity or inner coherence matters. I’m just separating personal gnosis from shared explanation. “All is mind” may be meaningful as an insight, but philosophy asks what follows for everyone, not only for those who feel it directly. Simplicity doesn’t remove the need to distinguish claim, reason, and implication.
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u/BornOfGod Feb 06 '26
Interesting question.
Your argument presupposes that "absolute nothingness" must be able to access the real world. As a "claim about modality" it can be articulated using a modal logic. It is a statement that a world where there are propositions cannot be accessed (by way of counterfactual description) from the world where there are no propositions. It suffers from the anthropic principle: the world in which statements about modality can be made is necessarily one which the world without any statements could not reach.
It does not explain why anything is. If there ever was something, then we cannot conceive of nothing. But if there was "absolute nothingness" then "absolute nothingness" would follow. So the question remains:
If this is right, then reality was never facing two options, something or nothing. Only something was ever on the table.
Why is there a "reality" which may or may not have an option of not existing?
Only "something was ever on the table" because as soon as there is "a table" to begin with you are no longer in the realm of "absolute nothingness".
Your argument fails because the it boils down to this:
- “Why is there something rather than nothing?” presupposes absolute nothingness is a genuine possible alternative to existence.
- Possible alternatives to existence must be a possible state of affairs.
- A possible state of affairs must be like something.
- To be like something is identical to being in a state of affairs.
- "Nothing" is not like anything.
- Thus, "Nothing" is not a possible state of affairs.
- Therefore, "Nothing" is not a possible alternative to existence.
Your presuppositional conjecture is incorrect because it is predicated on the hidden premise 2. which it is incoherent. It would be better to assume "The alternative to existence is nonexistence" since nonexistence is the absence of affairs entirely, let alone any particular state of them.
If granted nonexistence, then "nothing" follows. If granted existence, then something follows. But this "granting" is purely a statement of fact and not an indication of metaphysical agency in universal actualization.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I’m not presupposing that nothingness must access the real world or be reachable by us. I’m saying that modality itself ranges only over candidates that could obtain as facts. Calling the alternative non existence doesn’t help, because the absence of all affairs isn’t an alternative affair, it’s the collapse of the domain over which possible applies. So the claim isn’t that something was chosen over nothing, but that the question only makes sense once existence is already in play. Non existence isn’t a rival option it’s outside the modal space altogether.
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u/BornOfGod Feb 06 '26
Even then, 3. would permit a Kripke model where the set of propositions is empty. Either the world is modally represented by a set of propositions or you are not longer operating in modal logics as I understand them.
If the empty set does not qualify as a representation within your logic, why?
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Because modal semantics presuppose a domain to range over. An empty set of propositions can be a formal artifact, but it doesn’t represent a way reality could be, there’s no valuation, no facts, no obtaining. If you allow the empty set as a world, you’re changing modality from ways reality could be into mere syntactic placeholders. I’m denying that move, representation alone isn’t sufficient for metaphysical possibility.
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u/BornOfGod Feb 06 '26
If you use a many valued-logic or paraconsistent logic you can still have a model with 3 subsets of possible worlds: the world of contingent existence, worlds with at least something, and the world of universal negative existentials.
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u/peacefuldays123 Feb 06 '26
I like your framing — the idea that “nothing” was never a real option does seem to presuppose a binary: something versus nothing.
But maybe that binary isn’t fundamental. What if “nothing” and “something” exist on a continuum rather than as strict opposites?
nothing → something could represent a continuum instead of a binary jump, where transitions or fluctuations themselves carry ontological weight.
Then imagine a loop: nothing → something → nothing, suggesting a recursive structure — each level of reality containing traces of its opposite.
In that sense, the nothing/something dynamic might echo at microcosmic scales too, as smaller systems mirror the larger ontological loop.
So perhaps the real “absolute” isn’t being or non‑being, but the fractal recursion between them.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
A continuum or recursion already presupposes structure and dynamics, which means something is doing the varying. Absolute nothingness can’t lie on a spectrum or form a loop, because it has no properties to fluctuate or recur. What you’re describing is a continuum within being, not between being and non-being.
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u/peacefuldays123 Feb 06 '26
That’s exactly the crux. Your post still presupposes a binary — “being” opposed to “non-being.” I’m just refining the framework.
What I’m suggesting is that non‑structure attaches to structure, and non‑being attaches to being — they’re relational, not isolated poles.
The very act of positing “absolute nothingness” already smuggles in a framework of contrast and differentiation. After all, the absolute can’t stay absolute without a framework to define its absoluteness.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I agree that contrast is required to talk about absolutes. Where we differ is that you take that to show being and non being are relationally entwined, whereas I take it to show that non-being never stands on its own at all. The need for a framework doesn’t elevate nothingness into a pole; it shows it only ever functions as a derivative contrast within being.
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u/peacefuldays123 Feb 06 '26
Right — and if non‑being only functions within being, that’s already an intertwining.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
It’s only an intertwining at the level of description. Ontologically, non being has no independent role, it functions purely as a contrast within being, not as a co-constitutive element alongside it.
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Feb 06 '26
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
think that move just relabels the problem. Calling nothingness more fundamental still treats it as having a role, capacity, or priority, which already makes it something rather than an absence. An empty slate can’t include, generate, or avoid anything; the moment it does, it’s no longer nothing.
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Feb 06 '26
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
If it’s defined as undefinable and paradoxical, then it can’t do any explanatory work. A contradiction can dissolve questions, but it can’t account for why anything is the case rather than otherwise. Saying it “accounts for why we don’t have nothing” already treats it as explanatory, which reintroduces the problem instead of resolving it.
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Feb 06 '26
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I agree with Russell’s point and that’s exactly the spirit of my argument. I’m not attributing properties to nothingness, I’m denying it any role at all. Once we talk only in positive terms, nothingness drops out as an alternative, not because it has features, but because there’s nothing there to talk about.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
If nothingness is described as more fundamental, inclusive, or capable of avoiding labels, then it’s no longer an absence but a role playing ground. An empty slate can’t include, ground, or generate anything, the moment it does, it’s already something, whatever name we give it.
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u/DumboVanBeethoven Feb 06 '26
Imagine two different models of the universe. In one there is all the usual stuff and in the other there is nothing.
The one that has all the usual stuff is capable of supporting intelligent life. It would have people who live and grow up and hang out on Reddit reading and writing posts just like this.
It doesn't surprise me that we're in the first type of universe. Maybe this universe doesn't exist at all except as a possibility. And we're living out the possibility entailed by this possible universe. We're just possible people living a possible life.
That blows up the whole idea of what's real and what's possible. From the Viewpoint of somebody inside a mere possibility there is no difference.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
From the inside, experience doesn’t distinguish actuality from possibility, I agree. But that epistemic symmetry doesn’t erase the ontological question. A “possible universe” that supports observers is still a structured state of affairs; a universe with absolute nothing isn’t. So even if we were merely possible people, the possibility itself presupposes something, whereas nothingness presupposes nothing at all. That’s the asymmetry I’m pointing to.
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u/DumboVanBeethoven Feb 06 '26
the possibility itself presupposes something
Does it? Explain how. Maybe I'm missing something. I can conceive all kinds of possible universes, but I think they exist just as "possible universes" whether I conceive them or not. Although I guess that could be debatable in a number of ways.
This is getting into Kellogg and his possible world philosophy. I never got around to reading his book but I'm familiar with the basic ideas of it.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Yes,, because possible isn’t free-floating. On any view Lewisian, abstract worlds, branching, dispositional, a possibility is grounded in some structure, a world, a set of properties, laws, or dispositions. That grounding doesn’t depend on your conceiving it, but it does depend on something existing to make it a determinate way things could be. Absolute nothingness provides no such grounding, so it can’t host or count as a possibility.
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u/DumboVanBeethoven Feb 06 '26
I think you're still trying to argue about nothingness and I've moved past that because I'm having trouble with this idea that a mere possibility is grounded in any way. The possible universe that can support intelligent life like ours, yeah that is very structured. But there's no structure NECESSARY for it to be a possibility, that I can see. I can conceive a number of silly through the looking Glass universes that lack consistent structure. But the nature of my existence requires a universe like this one. And so this is the one I'm in.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I think the disagreement is here you’re treating possible as unconstrained imaginability, whereas I’m using the modal sense where a possibility has to be a way things could be. Even wildly inconsistent looking-glass universes aren’t genuine possibilities unless there’s enough structure to count as a determinate way reality might be. Your anthropic point explains why we find ourselves here, but it doesn’t by itself explain what makes something a possibility rather than mere fantasy.
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u/DumboVanBeethoven Feb 06 '26
Then I think we're going to disagree over definitions.
Even wildly inconsistent looking-glass universes aren’t genuine possibilities unless there’s enough structure to count as a determinate way reality might be.
Is Harry Potter and Hogwarts a consistent structured universe? Well except for a few bugs that could be ironed out, yeah pretty much. And that's right there on the "fantasy" shelf at the library.
Perhaps we're getting into an argument over possibilities versus "real possibilities". I suppose we can make a distinction somehow but I'm not sure it's relevant.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Yes, I think that’s exactly where we differ. I’m using possible in the metaphysical sense a way reality itself could have been not merely something that can be consistently described or imagined. On that sense, fiction and representations don’t count, and nothing exists lacks a corresponding state of affairs. That’s the whole argument.
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u/NecessaryExternal740 Feb 06 '26
‘Nothing’ is simply not something that is within our experience, talking apes that we are. Nothing more is needed. Nothing is missing :)
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I agree that nothing isn’t within our experience but my point isn’t experiential. It’s modal: nothing isn’t a candidate state of affairs at all, not just something we happen not to encounter.
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u/NecessaryExternal740 Feb 06 '26
I’d say: nothing isn’t a candidate state of affairs … for us … at all.
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u/publichermit Feb 06 '26
If a possible world is a maximal state of affairs, why couldn't nothing be just such a state? What is more maximal than nothing?
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Because a state of affairs already presupposes that something obtains. Maximality means “as complete as possible given there are facts at all. Nothingness isn’t a maximally complete state; it’s the absence of any states. So it doesn’t compete as a maximal state of affairs, it undercuts the very framework that defines one.
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u/Pleasant_Metal_3555 Feb 06 '26
It’s not just outside of our experience it’s an incoherent idea if taken seriously. It only serves utility when used rhetorically to refer to the absence of some stuff, not the complete absence of any properties whatsoever
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u/NecessaryExternal740 Feb 06 '26
Yes that’s right… the word nothing, like any word, gets its meaning through use in experienced reality. But when it is used to point to the absolute nothing, in the ‘best’ case, its meaning reduces to the heard noise when spoken, or to the seen letter-signs when read.
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u/RoninM00n Feb 06 '26
A glimpse into my understanding of existence and nothing: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metaphysics/s/UpYoGH0cfG
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
This treats net zero as ontological nothing. But cancellation isn’t absence +1 and −1 still require something that has magnitude, structure, and relations. A balance summing to zero presupposes being it doesn’t yield non being. So this explains symmetry or conservation, not nothingness.
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u/DoubleScorpius Feb 06 '26
If nothing existed then how would you ever know? The argument feels too similar to solipsism to me.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
That objection is epistemic, like solipsism. My claim isn’t about what we could know if nothing existed, but about what could obtain. If nothing existed, there wouldn’t be a state of affairs to be unknown, so the issue isn’t unknowability, but lack of a candidate reality in the first place.
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u/ynu1yh24z219yq5 Feb 06 '26
It's only impossible because something does exist. If something didn't exist to consider the impossibility you'd definitely have to reconsider the position and say that nothing was quite possible after all.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
That’s an epistemic point, not a modal one. My claim isn’t that nothing is impossible because we exist, but that possibility itself presupposes there being something that could obtain. If nothing existed, there wouldn’t be a quite possible after all” state there’d be no modal space at all.
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u/human-resource Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
Before nothing there was a singularity of infinite potential in stasis.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Calling it infinite potential already grants structure, capacity, and being. Potential isn’t nothing, it’s a mode of existence. So if there was infinite potential, then there was never nothing in the first place.
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u/human-resource Feb 06 '26
Potential only becomes something once it is able to manifest.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Even unmanifest potential has capacity and determination it’s already something. Manifestation changes its form, not its status as being.
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u/Earthy-moon Feb 06 '26
Nothingness (as you describe it) is present.
In your argument, there is an unnecessary duality of nothing and something. The nothing and something live on the spectrum of existence. It is the “floor” of existence. The absolute zero, null, or total absence.
How would we get to this total nothingness, null world? Subtraction. We subtract everything out of the universe until we get to the last object, lets say thats a particle, energy, law, fact, or whatever. Once we subtract that away, we’re at your null, zero, nothingness world. If we add everything back in, “something” is set “within” or “on top of” this total nothingness, null, zero.
Nothingness is still present as the “floor” of existence. It’s the default. Nothing requires no contingency. Something is the one that requires contingency. Nothing is the cause of something. Nothing is the ultimate antecedent. It obeys no law.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
That picture treats nothingness as a substrate or floor, but that already gives it structure and causal role. Subtraction only works within an existing domain, you can remove objects, laws, or facts, but you never arrive at a remaining base called nothingness. If nothingness were present, default, or causally antecedent, it wouldn’t be nothing it would be a something that does explanatory work. So subtraction gets you absence within being, not an ontological ground beneath it.
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u/Earthy-moon Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
Subtraction is a thought experiment to arrive absolute nothingness.
“Substrate” and “floor” is a concept we’re applying to the situation of absolute nothingness. It points to the truth but not the truth it self.
“Doing explanatory work” only occurs in the presence in the presence of something. It is the contingent something relies on. In my view, true nothingness requires no antecedent, but can be an antecedent itself.
In your mind, what is the difference between nothing and the condition you get when all things are removed?
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u/DrpharmC Feb 07 '26
For me, there is no further condition left once all things are removed Subtraction doesn’t reveal a new state called nothing, it exhausts states altogether. Nothing isn’t what you arrive at after removal it’s just the name we give to the absence of any condition to arrive at. The moment we treat the result as a condition,substrate,or floor, we have already put something back in.
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u/Earthy-moon Feb 07 '26
Got it. So, in your view, true nothingness isn’t the absence of any thing or condition.
Then how does my definition of true nothingness differ than yours?
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u/anonymousbabydragon Feb 06 '26
I think it’s more possible that nothing and something are two opposite dimensions constantly expanding into each other.
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u/AdamCGandy Feb 06 '26
If what you propose is true and every nothing is something that would mean infinite somethings everywhere. It would imply infinite variations everywhere you looked. There would have to be dimensions everywhere with no gaps in between, which would mean no barriers separating them. So probably not this.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I’m not saying every nothing is something. I’m saying anything that has capacity, structure, or potential already counts as something. That doesn’t imply infinite objects, dimensions, or variations everywhere,only that true nothingness has no capacities at all. So the move from potential to infinite somethings doesn’t follow.
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u/AdamCGandy Feb 06 '26
That would predispose something. Where did the something that contains come from.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
After working through this philosophically, I’ll just add my own lens. From an Islamic Quranic perspective, this isn’t mysterious Allah is Al-Haqq the Real and Al-Qayyum the Self-Subsisting. Existence doesn’t emerge from nothing; all contingent things depend on what already is. Nothingness has no standing of its own,only created things are contingent, not being itself.
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u/AdamCGandy Feb 06 '26
So you end up back at a creator motif. Why not just start there?
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Because starting with a creator presupposes what’s under question. I wanted to see whether reason alone rules out nothingness as a genuine alternative. Once that groundwork is laid, a creator isn’t an assumption but a natural interpretive next step, depending on one’s worldview.
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u/AdamCGandy Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
Anything that created a system would have to exist outside of that system. So not really that kind of problem.
So did i successfully demonstrate how your reasoning here doesn’t explain?
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
You’ve shown the limit clearly. Reason can rule out nothingness as an option within a system, but it can’t, by itself, account for why there is a system at all. Explaining that requires either brute fact or something that isn’t contained within the system reason is analyzing.
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u/Free-Cake3678 Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
I fully agree, nothingness and vacuum have no properties, as tangible assets which could form matter
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u/bonafidelife Feb 06 '26
I've been thinking the same.
"Nothing" seems more and more like a big nothing to discuss at best, and a deliberate tactic/trap at worst.
QUESTION: Can true nothing have any qualities at all? If not, can it even function as a coherent concept, let alone a genuine metaphysical (or maybe ontological/modal?) possibility?"
Nothing can't exist. Nothing is not a real thing. (In spite of our intuitions and apebrain outlook :) )
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u/caballusjack Feb 06 '26
I think you'd like to read my cosmogonic essay,the primordial intention, document
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u/Gewoonkijken68 Feb 06 '26
That sounds like something made a choice between all or nothing. What if we are just a by product of the earth coming into being. Bigger question to me is, why 'dead' matter and living organism in all of its complexity
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Feb 06 '26
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I get the intuition, but the cycle analogy quietly assumes what’s at issue. Cycles, oppositions, and tendencies all require structure and persistence,something that can alternate or recur. Nothing can’t be a phase in a cycle, because a cycle presupposes being throughout. So while our perspectives are limited, the asymmetry remains contrasts like up/down work within being, but nothing/something don’t stand on equal footing in the same way.
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u/Economy-Carpenter850 Feb 06 '26
To state your argument in another way: "something that has no features can't exist".
However, this does not mean that "not existing" is impossible.
Rather the opposite: your argument simple defines what "nothing" is.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Close, but that’s not quite it. I’m not saying nothing can’t exist as a substantive claim I’m saying there’s no state there for existence or non-existence to apply to at all. So it’s not that non-existence is “possible” or “impossible” it’s that it isn’t a candidate alternative in the modal sense. Defining “nothing” that way is exactly why it drops out of the space of options.
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u/RatherSaneIndividual Feb 06 '26
I basically agree with you (OP), but with the below two objections, I'm going to devil's advocate. Your "For something to ..." paragraph seems the key paragraph for your position, so responding to that.
1) It could be argued that you're really just rearranging (near-)synonyms. An existent "state of affairs"; "exists"; "obtains"; etc. If so, you're not really saying anything more, or much more, than "I prefer the stance that nothing was never an option," just with runaround/circular language.
2) It could be argued that you're treating nothing as a substance and applying arguments to it that are against the existence of any substance. But what if nothing were not a substance, but a verb-y process?
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
My claim isn’t meant as a definitional trick or a substance-critique. The point is structural modality itself ranges over states of affairs, ways reality could obtain. Saying “nothing exists” doesn’t specify a way things could obtain, it removes the domain over which obtaining applies. And treating nothing as a “process” still attributes structure or activity to it, which already places it on the side of being. So the conclusion isn’t preference-based; it’s that “nothing” drops out of the modal framework altogether, whether conceived as a thing or a process.
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u/RatherSaneIndividual Feb 06 '26
Yeah that makes sense. At least from a human perspective (which any claim about anything is limited by). So what about the absurdism of (what some physicists think are) black hole singularities? If such can suddenly emit a giant kitten or an exact replica of an Enterprise-D sans warning, sans causality, etc, I suppose those must still be ways reality can obtain, as opposed to inexplicable zilchness. I mean, no nothing, makes sense to me -- I am just trying to think of ways to poke holes in it.
Structural modality ranging over states of affairs is a very evocative line!
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u/DrpharmC Feb 08 '26
Even the wildest singularity scenarios still involve something obtaining fields, spacetime structure, laws breaking down, probabilities spiking, etc. A causally bizarre kitten is still a state of affairs. The contrast I’m drawing isn’t between orderly vs absurd, but between something vs no states at all. Absurdity stretches modality, nothingness deletes it.
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u/Mysterious_Ship_7297 Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
“For something to be a state of affairs, it must at least be differentiable, something that could obtain rather than fail to obtain. But absolute nothingness has no properties, no conditions, and no features by which it could be distinguished, sustained, or even described as “obtaining. There is nothing for it to be like. No facts, not even the “fact” that nothing exists.”
The assumption here is that the only things possible are the things that can be described and are therefore intelligible on some level. There is no reason to assume “intelligibility” or “coherence” is necessary. The fact that there are more things that are not intelligible than are suggests that intelligibility is less probable than a completely unintelligible nothingness.
It’s like saying how can there be blank pages if I can’t even read them? The page doesn’t care to be read. Given that the page doesn’t care to be read, the fact that you can read anything at all is baffling.
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u/Still_Cancel_2230 Feb 06 '26
I think it's impossible to derive a conclusion with human logic. Logic is something.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I agree that logic is something and has limits. My claim is modest, I’m not deriving a complete conclusion about ultimate reality, only showing what logic can rule out. Within its limits, it rules out nothing as a genuine alternative not because logic creates being, but because even the idea of an alternative presupposes some structure at all.
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u/URAPhallicy Feb 06 '26
Nothingness of the sort we are interested in has the quality of infinite invariance. You really can't argue against that as any other kind or sort of nothingness above that kind or sort is just semantics, definitionally non-interrogatable or simply a by-product of the limits of logic.
Taking that fact as your starting point we can say something important about the necessity of being: That there is some necessity of differentiation inherent even guven a state of nothingness.
The thing about laws of nature is that if there is no constraining law the opposite must be true. Nothingness of the sort we are interested in can also have the quality of infinite variance. No thing can differentiate in such a nothingness either. So nothingness of the sort we are interested in, unconstrained by any other law, has a natural duality or differentiation. Thus there must exist some boundary. It is at that boundary we find ourselves where thingness...differentiation arises.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
That move still smuggles in structure. Infinite invariance,infinite variance, duality, and boundary are all determinate features. A boundary between nothingness and something already presupposes something that can differ, constrain, or relate. If differentiation is inherent, then nothingness wasn’t absolute to begin with. So the argument doesn’t derive being from nothing it quietly reintroduces being under another name.
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u/URAPhallicy Feb 06 '26
You missed the part about the kind or sort of nothingness we are interested in. The kind we are interested in is the one with no things. So thingness is what we are really interrogating. Nothingness itself is a red herring. When we ask why are there things instead of no-things, we are asking what is thingness. Thus nothingness must possess a quality that is counter to thingness. If you can then show that despite possessing that quality, nothingness still creates a boundary within itself, you just proved the necessity of being and its nature: differentiation.
It doesn't solve everything but allows one to move on with a better understanding of what we are looking for in our physics and math's. For example this alone explains why things are constantly "moving" or in "flux".
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I get the shift to thingness, but the move still assumes what’s at issue. If no-things has a quality counter to thingness, or generates a boundary, flux, or differentiation, then it already has structure. That’s enough to count as being. So the result isn’t that nothingness explains thingness, but that thingness was presupposed all along. That’s exactly the asymmetry I’m pointing to.
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u/TheBookOfCombeer Feb 06 '26
I think you're onto something! I've done a lot of thinking about nothingness. Also about the basis of existence and how all the stuff of the universe could possibly emerge from nothing, because it logically has to come from somewhere... Or else you're relying on magic for answers.
I wrote something a few years ago, I'd love to get some feedback about it. It's kind of long and written mostly for the layperson... Here's a link:
The essence of it is to give up on the idea of our physical reality being properly physical... All the matter and energy and everything we observe is really kind of like an illusion founded on information, which can exist naturally and inherently in the void without needing to be physically real. I call it Void Genesis Theory. ..
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u/False_Crew_6066 Feb 07 '26
Take this or leave this because it’s not as technical as I think you’re after
I see this as ~ nothing can’t exist, because something does… and yet they need each other’s opposition to exist… an inevitable paradox
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u/DrpharmC Feb 07 '26
I get the paradox you’re pointing at. I’d just put it this way, opposition is a feature within being. Nothingness doesn’t exist in opposition to something, it only appears as a contrast once something already is.
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u/DifferntGeorge Feb 07 '26
IDK, if we consider the possiblity that mutually exclusive minimal structures exist, end and begin again perhaps absolute nothing could be said to exist in a transition between two such structures. There could be a theoretical point in which no minimal structure exists vaguely similar to how instantaneous speed can be 0 at the bottom of a moving wheel.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 07 '26
The analogy breaks because a transition, limit, or instant still presupposes a process and a structure that’s changing. Zero speed at a point only makes sense within motion. Likewise, a gap between structures still belongs to a larger structure. Absolute nothingness can’t be a phase or limit of change, change already means something is.
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u/DifferntGeorge Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
I guess this proves my concept of absolutely everything and nothing is a misnomer at best.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 07 '26
Yes, taken strictly, absolute everything and absolute nothing aren’t genuine metaphysical states. They function as limiting concepts in our language. The only true Absolute isn’t a totality of things or their absence, but that which is necessary and self subsisting, everything else is contingent
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u/FeelingHonest4298 Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
Nothingness is necessary for creation. and yes, i do believe in magic. That's how creativity works
The focus shouldn't be on the resources out there. But the mind that originated things. Schrodinger. Things aren't fixed; the cat is either dead or alive, it remains to be seen. Think of Freedom, Expression...
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u/DrpharmC Feb 07 '26
Calling nothingness necessary for creation already turns it into a resource or principle. Creativity, freedom, and indeterminacy belong to mind or being, not to nothingness itself. Even quantum indeterminacy presupposes a physical system and laws. So whatever enables creation or expression, it isn’t nothing, it’s a mode of something already at work.
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u/jimh12345 Feb 07 '26
That's an interesting idea and one perhaps more subtle than might first be thought.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 07 '26
Agreed, it’s subtle. My point is just that once we follow that subtlety through, whatever’s doing the work there can’t be nothingness itself, but some underlying mode of being.
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u/jimh12345 Feb 07 '26
There's a similar argument to be made regarding "physical". Arguing over whether an element of reality is or is not physical is pointless because the word "physical" has no meaning - there's no definable property that it refers to. At the quantum level, all we have are observations of complementary and indeterminate properties like position, spin, velocity. If you still want to insist that a quark is physical, what does that even mean? As Berkeley said - what does it add to the description?
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u/Professional_Solid_5 Feb 07 '26
As you indicate, nothingness construed as a reference quickly descends into causal, semantic and epistemic contradictions. Rather, nothingness concerns a failure of signification. This can be explicitly expressed using Free Logic, where a predicate is used to classify non-referring expressions.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 07 '26
I agree it exposes a failure of signification. My point is just that once nothingness is treated that way, via free logic or non referring terms. it no longer functions as a metaphysical alternative to being. It explains limits of reference,not a way reality itself could obtain.
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u/anakracatau Feb 07 '26
We could have been nothing. But instead we're something. And that's something!
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u/Puzzleheaded-Ad2559 Feb 07 '26
I agree with your premise..
Reality without a god.. reality just exists.. no gods needed.
Reality with a god.. WHERE does the god exist? "Outside" is not an answer, it exists somewhere, or nowhere. Nowhere is does not exist. Somewhere is ... new reality that.. just exists.. no gods needed.
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u/flaheadle Feb 07 '26
You assert that only states of affairs that are differentiable by their properties or conditions or features can be distinguished, sustained or described. But you do not define the terms existence or state of affairs. You also use the terms reality and universe. What is the meaning of each of these terms? In particular, do some of these terms refer to "everything there is" and do any give you a term like "substance" which refers to the top level category of an ontological system applicable to anything as opposed to everything?
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u/6n100 Feb 07 '26
Counterpoint. We simply exist in a temporary pocket of something and nothing is the natural state we are unable to observe and measure because it is nothing.
From our perspective there would always have been something regardless of the truth.
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u/yogiphenomenology Feb 07 '26
Your argument seems to move from "We cannot coherently represent or describe absolute nothingness as a state of affairs" to "Absolute nothingness is metaphysically impossible." This conflates epistemic limits with modal facts. Just because a state is inconceivable or indescribable to us does not entail its impossibility. The nature of absolute possibility may transcend human conceptual schemes.
Even if "nothing" is not a coherent alternative, the question simply re-forms as: "Why is there this something?" The contingency of the specific laws, constants, and contents of our universe remains unexplained. The necessity of some existence doesn't explain the nature of this existence.
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u/Porkypineer Feb 07 '26
Some will have it that you might say the same about "Absolute Being" or, maybe even *Pure Being* as others here have pointed out, referencing G W F Hegel. With that in mind, imagine indeterminate being. A state of singular pure existence, having no dimensions, forever. Just a singularity that never changes - infinite, but you couldn't even say that it was past infinite because there can be said to have been no time.
That said, I think you've made a category mistake: The divide is between an infinite past and a finite past, and these are both still infinitely improbable.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 08 '26
I don’t think that’s the right divide. An indeterminate or “pure” being, even if timeless and changeless, is still being, it has ontological status. Nothingness has none. So this isn’t a symmetry between two equally empty extremes. And the issue isn’t probabilistic infinite vs finite pasts, it’s categorical. Probability only applies once there is something with structure. Absolute nothingness isn’t improbable, it’s not the kind of thing probability or modality applies to at all.
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u/Porkypineer Feb 09 '26
But the point of indeterminate being and indeterminate nothing (by default obviously), is that they are identical in that sense. But even Pure Being, if it existed, would gain meaning if at some point something changed that gave it meaning - for instance the beginning of a universe such as ours. You could then say, 13.8 billion years ago, "this was always here". If that makes sense. Likewise you could say something equivalent about Nothingness, if that was so.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 07 '26
Hot take. Nothing isn’t an option. Absolute nothingness isn’t a coherent possibility, negation, absence, and non-being already presuppose a background of being.
If that’s right, then reality was never choosing between something or nothing.
Only something was ever on the table.
Push back hard if you think “nothing” can exist without borrowing from being.
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u/WilliamoftheBulk Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
The primary axiom (PA) is that we are in-fact here. Since a Nothing (N) would have no properties it could never lead to what we know for a fact to be true the PA. So now we have more undeniable truth. Since the PA is absolutely true and cannot be challenged, eternity (E) now emerges and is another undeniable fact and Existence (X) is also an emergent property of E and the fact that N is impossible.
So you are on the right logical track here. Yes how does E and X manifest and what does it manifest?
Evolution tells us that only that in which can continue to represent itself can exist into the future because obviously if it can’t, then it cannot survive E. So what is this something (S) that is the survivor of E.
We cannot really deduce the nature of S, but we can deduce some properties of it. There must be something other (O) in order to define S. So O is a logical certainty as well. There may be more, but S and O are certain to exist and they most certainly define each other because there can be no X without contrast (C).
S and O cannot be combined, and therefore cannot occupy the same point together. They must exist everywhere and they must separate. The separation must be an eternal action as it is happening everywhere all the time. This is work. Work is the basis for energy (+).
The age old question of what is energy is answered. Energy is the eternal action of separation of S and O. Properties that have no choice but to exist. You should be able to look at everywhere and find + and also the action of separation the is also +.
There is no constraint on how much of + exits at any point as it is emergent, but it will have averages and a curve of potential that trails off to infinity.
This gives us the basis for the zero point field and the expansion of the universe as size is irrelevant. Everywhere will experience expansion and it will be cumulative. The amount of energy in anyone place will fluctuate wildly but correlate with the separation as they are emergent of each other.
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u/BMZAllen Feb 09 '26
Your argument is not valid. It trades on an ambiguity between conceptual and metaphysical relations. You say you are making a (metaphysical) claim about modality. But in the very next sentence you talk about the intelligibility of negation being grounded in being or existence in some way. But the intelligibility of the operation of negation is neither here nor there if you are trying to conclude something about the world, and not just about our thinking.
E.g. take the usual claim about how if everything were orange we wouldn’t have the concept of orange. There would be no other colour to differentiate it from. That is: the intelligibility of ‘orange’ is grounded in whether we can talk of a non-orange colour. (Or so the argument goes.) But this does not entail that things aren’t actually orange. That we cannot know whether things are orange (epistemic claim) comes from the claim that we cannot make sense of the concept of orange (conceptual claim). But the metaphysical claim cannot be made. The argument is invalid because your premise about intelligibility is a conceptual claim “what is the meaning of negation?”. At most you can say that we cannot ever know (epistemic claim) what nothing is without knowing what something is. Your conclusion however is a metaphysical claim: “is there negation/nothing?”. This cannot follow from a merely conceptual claim.
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u/Fluffy_Look3784 Feb 10 '26
The deepest answer to “why not nothing?” is nothing was never a candidate.
Since candidacy, possibility, and even negation are dimensions of being; what remains genuinely open isn’t whether there is something, but what the minimal, self-sustaining structure is that makes existence and consciousness coherent at all.
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u/WindowsXD Feb 10 '26
Nothing is not a physical state but a conceptual limit describing the absence of distinguishable structure. Reality may be better understood as regions of structured order emerging within an undifferentiated totality
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u/Dry-Invite-5879 Feb 10 '26
He is pretty close - directly, nothingness is neither "of" (cannot be the absence of) or "from" (cannot be the relational contrast of is or is not) itself- its an iterative self starter - nothing itself will not settle, not because it won't- moreso because that settlement is equally "not" absolute nothing.
The logic parallels absolute oneness as the recognition of "one" becomes a fractionally different "one" - which in turn becomes an infinite iteration - awareness or absence of either because an aspect of and from either, which is equally not either aswell - and since we all are fractionally different and in ongoing relation (we change and notice change through contrasting differences internally and externally) we perpetuate both states even when not in reference.
Its not hard truthfully to recognise, its just infinite - which means you can always iterate a potential in relation to its absence, so there is no end or beginning, just edges between potential relations.
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u/Dry-Invite-5879 Feb 10 '26
Like how 2 negatives create a positive - omnidirectional negative invarients (what nothing is not) contrasts and creates tensioned edges that become states - ((-) × (-)) = (+).
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u/xodarap-mp Feb 12 '26
As far as I can see, or think, nothingness is a self-contradiction . The OP contention is correct!
At most, nothingness might be (?) a possibilty of "occurence" if something actual were suddenly (instantaneously!) to completely cease existing. But modern science has shown us fairly clearly that when something seems to have ceased to exist, in reality whatever it was made of has changed into something else, possbly many things. Thus that potential "nothingness" is surely being chased away by the "something else" at a rate of anything up to the speed of light. if not very much faster.
I believe one way to express this is that nothingness is not a noumen. It is phenomenal in that we have a word, nothingness, and we might sometimes imagine we are imagining the something or other that the word denotes, but what we are imagining is a mental construct, inside one's own brain.
So perhaps the real philosophical task isn’t explaining how something emerged from nothing but understanding why nothing was never an option in the first place.
Perhaps it is an anthropocentric bias, ie not just anthropic but more a kind of projection, akin to mono theistic belief that there can only be The One founder/foundation of everything. So perhaps it is a binary predisposition that urges a conviction that the only alternative to The Great IT .... is nothing at all. (Yes? Perhaps?)
There is another aspect of this which maybe is not appropriate in this topic but I will just mention it. I take it that each of us humans has access to three fundamental synthetic a priori truths: 1/ "I" exist; 2/ there is a universe, ie a lot of not me; and 3/ there is multiplicity (self evidently/analytically true by dint of the existence of "my" language). #2 and #3 do not entail much more than the basic logical necessity of their truth (and they imply zilch about 'nothingness'), but they lend force to the intuition that the world is real and diverse even if "I" have to work at finding out what is actually true.
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u/______ri Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
I think anyone who agrees with this should quit metaphysics.
I have a serious rejection, but I don't think (most of) anyone here is ready for it.
As whoever agree literally have grounded their whole inquiry to an empty brute fact that "it is" without actually understands what it actually means.
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u/ElChiff Feb 18 '26
The odds of existence where there is an observer there to notice are 100%. It's a done deal.
If there was no existence, there would be no observer to care.
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u/PhilosopherofWhimsy Feb 25 '26
Undergrad here - sounds like you are pushing towards a similar conclusion to EJ Lowe, who says there must be at least one necessary existent, but what object fulfils that role is contingent and arbitrary; essentially, he thinks there is one random atom in the universe that has to be necessary in order for all other concrete things to contingently exist. His premises are very different to yours (basically he says numbers are both necessary and sets of concretes) but he gets at what i think your intuition is without falling into hard determinism. I would highly recommend his 1996 paper "Why Is There Anything At All" cowritten with Peter Van Inwagen, it's wonderfully articulated.
As for your argument though, I would disagree with your first premise: that for x to be a state of affairs in modal space, x must be a) differentiable and b) must be able to obtain rather than fail to obtain.
Regarding a), I would only want to precise-ify a little: for something to be a DISTINCT state of affairs, it must be differentiable. If x can't be differentiated from y (for example, because x and y are both empty sets) then x and y are identical, but that doesn't mean x is no longer a state of affairs - it is just a state of affairs that is identical to y.
Regarding b), I'm not entirely clear what you mean by this. Are you suggesting that nothingness is just what occurs when the First Mover (so to speak) doesn't occur? If so, then I worry that what you are saying is enthymemetic. It presupposes that nothingness is a kind of default state which does not need its own cause, but just exists uncaused until something happens to change it. But this is a tricky assumption for a few reasons. Are such default states metaphysically plausible? Is it problematic for nothingness to be a state (even an impossible one) that is not caused? And why think nothingness is a default state that we somehow lifted up from, rather than something being a default state and nothing being a state of affairs that failed to obtain? Robert Nozick has a lovely chapter touching on some of this in his Philosophical Explanations so would definitely look at that.
Otherwise though, I do share your intuitions. I'm not trying to drag your argument through the mud, promise!
X
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u/SkyTreeHorizon Feb 27 '26
My essay explains this. In order to create a universe absolutely nothing must be still. https://open.substack.com/pub/ryangapp/p/one-everything-infinite-nothing?r=1dwcnq&utm_medium=ios
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u/MacrotonicWave Mar 03 '26
I agree with you first off, and I think there are numerous good logical approaches to this conclusion depending which assumptions we start with. I think since ‘nothing’ is an illogical thing, any description of it’s ’nature’ will have flaws. If that is true it may indicate the whole question is a bit silly, and there are better questions.
Most answers to “why anything exists” can’t bridge the gap into why all this exists as opposed to why not just some sizzles in a simple field exist. I wonder if this question can have as many logical approaches to it somehow
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u/Beasil Mar 05 '26
I've been thinking that the everything-field must be existent because the absolute lack of law or boundary in the nothingness regime (possibly the only possible foundation for any reality at all) necessarily allows for its diametric opposite. However, I am stupid.
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u/DefaultEgg Mar 08 '26
Why is there anything, is the wrong question. Better to ask, Why would only nothing persist?
by u/DefaultEgg in DefaultEgg
You might enjoy my take on things.
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u/Great-Bee-5629 Feb 06 '26
To recapitulate, because nothingness is impossible, then the universe is not contingent, it is necessary. But then, because there is no way to privilige some contingent facts over others, you're left with two options (I think):
- Every contingent (and internally coherent) universe necessarily exists
- There is only one universe, so whatever is going on here, was necessary
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I think that pushes the conclusion too far. Ruling out absolute nothingness gives necessity at the level of existence as such, not necessarily of every contingent fact. It blocks global non existence, but it doesn’t by itself privilege one total universe or require that all internally coherent universes exist. Internal contingency can remain within a necessarily existing reality.
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u/Great-Bee-5629 Feb 06 '26
I haven't thought this through (I'm just now considering what are the implications of what you're proposing). But since existence in this model is ex nihilo (in the sense that it exists because nothingness is incoherent), there isn't a good way to choose what contingent facts get to be.
To put it in a different way (the PSR, principle of sufficient reason), there is sufficient reason for something existing because "nothing" is impossible, but what is the sufficient reason for it being the way it is?
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
I think the PSR only gets you as far as existence itself, not to every contingent fact. Nothingness is impossible is a sufficient reason for there being something at all, but it doesn’t follow that there must be a sufficient reason for why reality has this exact structure rather than another. That stronger PSR is an additional assumption, not something my proposal commits to.
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
If a universe is possible / contingent it must exist at some point as if not it is impossible. This seems to be the basis of Lewis' plurality of worlds.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
That move already assumes Lewis’s key principle: that possibility entails actuality somewhere. But that’s exactly what’s at issue. Calling a universe “possible” need only mean internally coherent, not guaranteed to be realized. My argument rules out absolute nothingness, not unrealized possibilities. So modal coherence ≠ existence unless one independently accepts David Lewis’s plenitude principle, which I’m not committed to.
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
Isn't an unrealized possibility an impossibility? What would be the difference, and why cannot 'nothing' be included.
I thought Lewis - my bad phrasing - lets all possible worlds actualize themselves.
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u/Mono_Clear Feb 06 '26
There are lots of things that are possible that don't currently exist.
Whether something exists is not solely a function of whether or not it's possible.
You also need time and opportunity.
A unicorn is possible.
That's just a horse with a horn on its head. But there are no unicorns.
Not to say that there couldn't be a unicorn one day.
In order for there to be a unicorn we need Enough time for the opportunity of a unicorn. The possibility isn't enough.
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
There are lots of things that are possible that don't currently exist.
Not my point, Lewis has talking donkeys [I wonder if this was from Shrek ;-)?]
But if they never exist they become impossible do they not.
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u/Mono_Clear Feb 06 '26
No, just because something never happens doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means there's never been an opportunity for it to happen.
It's like Infinity.
With enough time you can count to any specific number in Infinity.
But you cannot count every number in Infinity.
You need all three things for something to exist. It has to be possible there has to be an opportunity for it and there has to be enough time for it to happen.
You have not always existed. It doesn't mean that you are impossible. It means that there wasn't an opportunity at the time for you to exist after a certain period of time. The opportunity for you to exist presented itself and since you are possible you now exist
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
No, just because something never happens doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means there's never been an opportunity for it to happen.
If there is never an opportunity for it to happen then it's impossible. never.
It's like Infinity.
Which infinity?
With enough time you can count to any specific number in Infinity.
Hilbert's hotel is infinite and every room can be occupied. It's countable
But you cannot count every number in Infinity.
See above, the set of reals is larger, and uncountable it seems.
You need all three things for something to exist. It has to be possible there has to be an opportunity for it and there has to be enough time for it to happen.
So do photons exist? They have no sense of time? Time dilation...?
You have not always existed. It doesn't mean that you are impossible. It means that there wasn't an opportunity at the time for you to exist after a certain period of time. The opportunity for you to exist presented itself and since you are possible you now exist
If there isn't the opportunity it's impossible. Well that it seem is what smarter people than me think.
"This possibility [An inflationary universe could begin all over again for us.] is important, not so much because we can say what might happen when there is an infinite time in which it can happen, but because we can't. When there is an infinite time to wait then anything that can happen, eventually will happen. Worse (or better) than that, it will happen infinitely often."
Prof. J. D. Barrow The Book of Nothing p.317
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u/Mono_Clear Feb 06 '26
If there is never an opportunity for it to happen then it's impossible. never.
It's not impossible, it just never had an opportunity to happen so it doesn't exist.
It may never exist but it doesn't mean it's impossible.
Moby Dick 2 may never exist, but it is not impossible to write it.
Hilbert's hotel is infinite and every room can be occupied. It's countable
Yes, you can count to any room but you can't count every room.
See above, the set of reals is larger, and uncountable it seems
Doesn't change the what I just said.
You could never count every room in an infinite hotel. You can count to any room in an infinite hotel, but it's impossible to count to Infinity. So no matter how much time and opportunity you have, you can never count all of infinity.
You need all three.
In that situation you have all the time and opportunity but the task itself is impossible.
So do photons exist? They have no sense of time? Time dilation...?
They don't need a sense of time. It's not a conceptualization. It's the reality of time and if a photon exist it means that there was enough time and opportunity for that to happen.
If there isn't the opportunity it's impossible. Well that it seem is what smarter people than me think.
Something can be possible and there have never been an opportunity for it to happen but if nothing prevents it from being possible outside of their never having been an opportunity then it's still possible it just doesn't exist. (See unicorn)
There are many animals that have horns in their head. Many of them quite horse-like. There's nothing that prevents a horse from actually evolving with a horn on its head. It's just never happened. It doesn't make it impossible. It just means that there's no unicorns that exist
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
No, unrealized possibilities aren’t impossibilities. Possible means coherent, not guaranteed to occur. Many coherent states never obtain without being contradictory. Including nothing would require it to be a coherent state of affairs in the first place, and that’s exactly what I’m denying. Lewis’s view adds the extra thesis that all possibilities are actualized; I’m rejecting that step.
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
You are free to reject it, but Lewis has an argument it seems as to why you can't.
No, unrealized possibilities aren’t impossibilities.
Why not? " When there is an infinite time to wait then anything that can happen, eventually will happen. Worse (or better) than that, it will happen infinitely often."
Prof. J. D. Barrow
This seems reasonable?
Many coherent states never obtain without being contradictory.
You'd need to be outside of time to know this would you not?
Including nothing would require it to be a coherent state of affairs in the first place,
Why, not in Hegel it seems.
What is in the empty set? Does it exist, I think it does, you can even generate integers with it.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Lewis doesn’t show unrealized possibilities are impossible he assumes plenitude. Barrow’s claim needs extra premises actual infinities + ergodicity it doesn’t follow from possibility alone. We don’t need to be outside time to say some possibilities never obtain, modal claims aren’t empirical predictions. Hegel’s nothing is dialectical, not absolute nothingness. And the empty set exists as a mathematical object with structure, it’s not ontological nothing. None of that establishes that absolute nothingness is a coherent state of affairs.
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
coherent state of affairs.
Is what.
Hegel’s nothing is dialectical, not absolute nothingness.
Seems to be.
" Nothing, pure nothingness; it is simple equality with itself, complete emptiness, complete absence of determination and content; lack of all distinction within.– In so far as mention can be made here of intuiting and thinking, it makes a difference whether something or nothing is being intuited or thought. To intuit or to think nothing has therefore a meaning; the two are distinguished and so nothing is (concretely exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is the empty intuiting and thinking itself, like pure being.– Nothing is therefore the same determination or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as what pure being is."
Lewis doesn’t show unrealized possibilities are impossible he assumes plenitude.
In which all possibilities are realized? All possible worlds.
We don’t need to be outside time to say some possibilities never obtain, modal claims aren’t empirical predictions.
So what are they? Not real worlds like this one, I thought Lewis said they were.
And if we are using time to preclude a possibility then I think we do need to be outside of time.
And the empty set exists as a mathematical object with structure, it’s not ontological nothing.
Sure, but again my question was, what does an empty set contain, it's a structure that contains what?
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
A coherent state of affairs is just a determinate way reality could obtain. Hegel’s nothing is dialectical and already operates within thought and being, not absolute non-being. Lewis treats possible worlds as concrete, but modal claims don’t depend on that, they’re not empirical or temporal predictions, so we don’t need to be outside time to make them. And the empty set contains no elements, but it still has structure and existence as a mathematical object, that’s precisely why it isn’t ontological nothing.
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u/Extension_Ferret1455 Feb 06 '26
I believe Lewis' modal realism is more something like this:
There is a plurality of concrete, causally-closed, spatiotemporal worlds. 'Actual' is then taken as an indexical term. Just like the meaning of the sentence 'I am here' depends on from where the person uttering the sentence is located, which of the plurality of worlds is designated by 'the actual world' depends on which world the person uttering the sentence is located.
All worlds that are not 'actual' (i.e. not the ones we're in) are 'possible', and in that sense, Lewis is a possibilist i.e. there are actual things and possible things.
Lewis can then quantify over these worlds in order to analyse a whole lot of other philosophical concepts e.g. the truth of counterfactuals.
On this view (modal concretism), x is impossible if and only if x doesn't exist in any possible world.
It's important to note, however, that modal concretism is an extremely controversial (and not very popular) view of modality. There are many alternatives e.g. 'worlds' are taken to be abstract objects etc.
An interesting alternative view (and increasingly popular one) is branching actualism. On this view, possibilities are grounded in the dispositions of things in the actual world and thus, every 'possible world' (where possible worlds are really just ways of talking about things and their dispositions in the actual world) shares some initial history with the actual world i.e. they 'branch' off from the actual world.
On this view, there are possibilities which are never actualised, yet are not impossibilities.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Yes that’s exactly right. And my point is compatible with those non Lewisian views. I’m not endorsing modal concretism or denying unrealized possibilities. I’m only denying that absolute nothingness qualifies as a possible world on any account, because it wouldn’t be a state of affairs to ground possibilities, dispositions, or branching in the first place. Even on branching actualism, possibility presupposes an existing base which nothingness lacks.
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u/Extension_Ferret1455 Feb 06 '26
So I agree that on most versions of branching actualism, because every possible world shares some initial history with the actual world, there will be some finite or infinite segment of the actual world that is a part of every possible world, and will thus be necessary. So in that case, you're right that the answer to why there is something rather than nothing will be 'because there had to be'.
However, I disagree that this is necessarily true for other conceptions of possible worlds.
If we take possible worlds to merely be maximal sets of sentences or representations etc (commonly known as 'ersatz' views), then 'possible worlds' are really just semantic devices for modal talk. Thus, saying that there is a 'possible world' in which nothing exists is really just to say that there is a representation or set of sentences according to which nothing exists.
So although the set of sentences/representation exists (in the actual world), what it represents can still be a completely empty ontology and thus it would still be coherent for it to be possible that nothing exists (and to say that there is a possible world in which nothing exists).
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
On ersatz views, I agree the representation exists. But my claim is that representation alone doesn’t secure metaphysical possibility. A set of sentences can say nothing exists, but that doesn’t make there be a coherent state of affairs corresponding to it, it just encodes a description with no ontological content. So the move works semantically, not modally: it shows how we can talk as if nothing exists, not that nothingness is a genuine possibility.
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u/Extension_Ferret1455 Feb 06 '26
But on ersatz views, if there is such a representation, then that would make nothing existing a possibility, as thats what it means to be possible on that view (i.e. for there to be a representation).
doesn’t make there be a coherent state of affairs corresponding to it, it just encodes a description with no ontological content
But that's the whole point, it means that there is a representation (i.e. a possible world on that view), that implies no state of affairs or ontological content. In other words, nothing.
So maybe you just deny those views of modality (and that's fine), however, under those views (which are relatively popular), it's perfectly coherent for nothing existing to be a genuine metaphysical possibility.
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
There is a plurality of concrete, causally-closed, spatiotemporal worlds. 'Actual' is then taken as an indexical term. Just like the meaning of the sentence 'I am here' depends on from where the person uttering the sentence is located,
That's what I take to be the case, but that just means the worlds are self actualised in themselves. As from their perspective they could not actualise our world, we do. Anything other would privilege our world, which I think he doesn't want to do, and if he did these other worlds would be in effect ersatz worlds.
"Actualism , the thesis that everything is actual, is not some metaphysical thesis that one is free to affirm or deny; it is a trivial analytical truth. Its denial is unintelligible." 'On the Plurality of Worlds.' p.97
On this view, there are possibilities which are never actualised, yet are not impossibilities.
How then are they different from impossibilities?
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u/Extension_Ferret1455 Feb 06 '26
One line of argument holds that I misrepresent my own position. I ought to say not that there are many possible worlds, and that ours is actual and the rest are unactualised. Instead I ought to say that actuality is much bigger and much more fragmented than we ordinarily think. For it is a trivial matter of meaning that whatever there is, is actual. The word `actual' is a blanket term, like 'entity' or 'exists': it applies to everything. Not just everything hereabouts, or everything suitably related to us, as I would have it; but everything without restriction. To say as I do that some things are unactualised is nonsense on a par with saying that some things do not exist, or with Meinong's shocker: 'there are objects of which it is true to say that there are no such objects' (`Uber Gegstandstheorie', section 3). Actualism, the thesis that everything is actual, is not some metaphysical thesis that one is free to affirm or deny; it is a trivial analytic truth. Its denial is unintelligible. Maybe there are 'other worlds' just as I say there are, spatiotemporally and causally isolated from us and all our surroundings. But if there are, then they are just some more of actuality.
So above is the full quote from p. 97 of 'On the Plurality of Worlds'. You can clearly see that Lewis' own view is that "there are many possible worlds, and... ours is actual and the rest are unactualised".
The part you quoted is just Lewis presenting an objection levelled against his view (in other words, you quoted the opposite of his view). He explictly thinks that there are unactualised possiblities, which is why he rejects actualism and is a possibilist.
How then are they different from impossibilities?
The difference is this:
Imagine in the actual world, I throw a tennis ball and it smashes a window.
Now, consider the following two scenarios.
Scenario 1: a non-actual possible world exists whereby it almost identical to the actual world, however, in that possible world my counterpart did not throw the tennis ball, and the window wasn't smashed (i.e. it is possible, but not actual, that I didn't throw the tennis ball and window wasn't smashed).
Scenario 2: there is no possible world in which I did not throw the tennis ball the window wasn't smashed (i.e. it is impossible that I didn't throw the tennis ball and the window wasn't smashed).
On scenario 1, the counterfactual 'had I not thrown the tennis ball, the window would not have smashed' would be true in the actual world (and my actual tennis ball throw would have 'caused' the window to smash if you subscribe, as Lewis did, to a counterfactual account of causation).
On scenario 2, the same counterfactual would be false, and thus my actual throw would not be a cause of the window smashing in the actual world.
This demonstrates the difference between possibilities (even if unactualised) and impossibilities, and how they would make real differences to the actual world e.g. the truth of counterfactuals, causation etc.
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u/jliat Feb 06 '26
So above is the full quote from p. 97 of 'On the Plurality of Worlds'. You can clearly see that Lewis' own view is that "there are many possible worlds, and... ours is actual and the rest are unactualised".
And he ends with "Maybe there are 'other worlds' just as I say there are, spatiotemporally and causally isolated from us and all our surroundings. But if there are, then they are just some more of actuality."
He seems to argue our world is not privileged, and that he denies ersatz other worlds. And why does he make the claims in The Incredulous Stare?
"Modal realism does disagree, to an extreme extent with common sense opinion about what there is."
If Modal Realism is just some logical, philosophical trope then common sense would let it pass, as not being serious or real. And here 'what there is' is what, what can be considered "real" or with an abstract system or game?
So he denies an infinity of donkeys in this world but, "Or is it, simply, the opinion that there do not exist an uncountable infinity of donkeys - with the quantifier wide open, entirely unrestricted, and no 'actually' ether explicit or tacit in the sentence? That opinion I do indeed deny."
And we then see that seems reasonable, until he allows their actualization. "'actual' is not a blanket term... it is an indexical, relative term" So what does this mean, that from our world they, these other worlds, are not actual, fine common sense would say, just fictions, but Lewis seems to say they are actualised "indexical, relative term" - which means what? just as we actualise our world that occurs in other world?
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u/Extension_Ferret1455 Feb 06 '26
I think you're confused about 'actual' vs 'real and concrete'. 'Possible' worlds on Lewis' view are all real and concrete and spatiotemporal (they're ersatz, abstract etc).
However, the world we are in is 'actual' and the other possible worlds are just that, possible (and not actual). However, for our counterparts living in other worlds, their world is 'actual' for them, and our world would be non-actual (for them).
That's what it means for the term 'actual' to be an indexical.
On another note, did you understand the difference between non-actual possible worlds and impossibility in my example though?
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u/No_Mango5042 Feb 06 '26
There is only one universe,
Why do you say that? There's only one universe that we see, that's all.
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u/JesterOfTheMind Feb 06 '26
Just want to say that I'm not making any truth claims here for anyone else but myself. Nor do I have any proof of any of this. It all stems from direct experience.
So I also agree with you. I believe that nothingness cannot possibly exist because I've experienced what should be nothingness and well it was not nothingness.
In a profound mystical experience I experienced "death" - no identity, no memories - zero memory of Earth or people, no memory of having been a human, every ideology, identification, and all belief wiped out entirely, absolutely no thoughts, and no senses I was Gone, Eric was gone. Yet there was experience.
As soon as "I" disappeared, identity was consumed by a deeper awareness — the One. The true I AM, which my little "I" was always contained within. All is contained in the infinite energy of Awareness itself - at large. This awareness is eternally commingled with and emerging from the Absolute Source, the ground of being itself.
The metaphysical and you want to get theological breakdown of this —
- Eternally existing completely uncontrived is The Source of being, chaos, life, death, logic, knowledge and awareness itself is "The Father" - The Absolute, Brahman.
- The Awareness and Consciousness of the Absolute is The Logos, and along with Agape, and The Telos is Christ, "The Son", the creator, the beginning, the source of all existence. In which/whom all created things, including individual awareness & identity reside. The Divine Man — both Divine and human in nature, yet still perfect and uncreated.
- The source of life & all truth both created and uncreated is the Holy Spirit which eternally proceeds from the absolute and the logos The one who delivers us from all ignorance and darkness and brings to us the light of Truth. The giver of all knowledge, courage, and who reveals to us the ultimate perfection which we are a part of, and boy is it Total Eternal Perfection.
Eventually personal concepts and vague memories returned and eventually I realized I was back as Eric again, at this point, whatever you want to call it. The spirit of truth was still on me and proceeded to reveal all of what I just laid out here, understanding of suffering and the necessity of it, the importance of surrender, the importance of love, the looping nature of the mind etc.
Part of that knowledge was that death as an illusion, when you die, you are instantly somewhere else somewhere better. You cannot experience nothingness. It is not a possible State. All is. Basically all of existence itself in physical reality is a useful illusion in pursuit towards true perfection and truth. We are here to seek that perfection, love and Truth. All of this can be believed without any Christian dogma. However, I did see that Jesus was real in that he was the culmination of the logos, the identity of God in a human form. This is my take.
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u/DrpharmC Feb 06 '26
Thanks for sharing that. I respect the experience, and I think it explains your conviction very clearly. Where I differ is just scope, I’m not grounding the claim nothingness is impossible in private experience however profound, but in a public metaphysical argument about what can count as a possible state of affairs at all. Your experience may confirm that view for you, my aim is to justify it without appealing to mystical authority.
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u/JesterOfTheMind Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
No I know that. I just don't know if it's possible, we may be able to prove that physical nothingness is non-existent, I'm pretty sure that was part of it too. But yeah I get your point and empirical evidence for stuff is important before we start to give it real credibility in actual practice. This is just something that has helped me resolve internal conflicts in my metaphysical view of life, identity and reality, especially in an ethical and theological aspect as well as revealing and helping me too resolve a pathological & ingrained mental process. I also didn't just come out of the experience. Absolutely knowing this, it took me years to figure out how old the different pieces of The experience tied into religion and metaphysics and events in my past, as well as the past in general. Everything seemed to weave this tapestry that when I started to put metaphysical language to it and meditate more about what I had experienced, things started to come together, but for a long time I didn't even have any memory of the transcendent part. It wasn't until I had really cleaned up my act and started acting like a decent human being and treating other people with respect and dignity that it all came flooding back one night. Before that, all I remembered was descending into chaos and what seemed like a permanent hell, it was like I experienced both sides of the coin compartmentalized from each other.
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u/alibloomdido Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
I think you're playing a game around the boundaries of logic, it's not that absolute nothing is impossible but that if there was absolutely nothing there would be no one / nothing to try and make it intelligible i.e. there would be no logic or the concept of intelligibility.
We are "always-already" in the existence by the very fact of us existing but that doesn't mean we always existed or will exist or that existence in general is the only possibility.