Abstract
Let’s call the sentence “why is there something rather than nothing?” the Question. There’s no consensus, of course, regarding which proposed answer to the Question, if any, is correct, but occasionally there’s also controversy regarding the meaning of the Question itself. In this paper I argue that such controversy persists because there just isn’t one unique interpretation of the Question. Rather, the puzzlement expressed by the sentence “why is there something rather than nothing?” varies depending on the ontology implicitly or explicitly endorsed by the speaker. In this paper I do three things. First, I argue that other proposals according to which the Question has one uniquely adequate interpretation are false. Second, I give several examples of the way in which the meaning of the Question can vary depending on the ontology to which it is coupled. Third, I explore the implications of my thesis for the manner in which we should approach future attempts to answer the Question.
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Notes
And yet, it often does. Several philosophers have, in reaction to this paper, told me that the “correct” interpretation of the Question—what the Question is “really” asking—is such-and-such. Needless to say, the fact that these philosophers have endorsed conflicting interpretations of the Question further supports my thesis.
Of course, if, as I’m arguing in this paper, different philosophers are apt to offer different interpretations of the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” it might be a bit misleading to speak of them all as asking “the Question” (singular). But there shouldn’t be any harm if we keep in mind that, when I speak of philosophers asking “the Question” I don’t mean that they all interpret that question in the same manner.
Strangely enough, however, Goldschmidt repudiates the suggestion that the Question might be interpreted to mean “why is there any being at all?”: “The question should ... not be construed as a question about why a possible world containing some being obtains rather than a world containing no beings at all. The notion of such a perfectly empty world is incoherent” (Goldschmidt 2013b: 4). Clearly enough, even if Goldschmidt thinks the notion of a completely empty world is “incoherent” (and his arguments for this contention are, for what it’s worth, not very compelling), many philosophers would disagree, and they might very well take the Question to mean something like “why does a possible world containing some being obtain, rather than a world containing no being at all?” Even if this is a bad question to ask, as Goldschmidt supposes it is, it might still be a question people ask. What’s more, even if it is a necessary truth (as Goldschmidt maintains) that something or other exists, we might still wonder why it is the case that necessarily something or other exists. The latter question still might be an interesting question.
To Rescher’s credit, it’s not entirely obvious whether he conflates these two questions, since it is Leibniz to whom he attributes an interest in the question “Why are there physical (contingent) existents at all?” Nevertheless, this is simply a segue into Rescher’s own discussion of the Question. He gives no indication that he doesn’t intend to follow Leibniz’s construal(s) of the Question.
According to many physicists and philosophers of physics, the ontology of quantum field theory is one according to which particles are either reducible to, or in some sense emergent from, fields (see, for example, Halvorson and Clifton 2002).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.
Grünbaum also takes his thesis to have implications for the manner in which we assess certain sorts of cosmological arguments for theism, and in particular for what demands for explanation (cited by proponents of such arguments) we take seriously. The Question has often been discussed in the same breath as cosmological arguments for theism (see, e.g., Leibniz’s “On the Ultimate Origin of Things”). I am not sure, however, what implications the thesis of this paper has for any of the cosmological arguments for theism, and I’m not sure I want to endorse Grünbaum’s negative assessment of those arguments.
An anonymous referee has suggested that it is uncharitable to interpret van Inwagen to be suggesting that his interpretation of the Question (more or less “why are there concrete objects rather than no concrete objects?”) is the only correct interpretation of the Question. In correspondence, however, van Inwagen tells me that this is indeed his view. In his words: “I continue to believe that the proper formulation of the Question is, ‘Why is there anything concrete? Why isn’t everything abstract?’ ” He also explicitly rejects the thesis of this paper.
Ontic structural realism is often described as a thesis regarding the fundamental constituents of the world, rather than the constituents simpliciter (one recent example is McKenzie 2014). On this interpretation, ontic structural realism is the thesis that the fundamental constituents of reality are structures of some sort, and physical objects (particles, fields, whatever) are grounded in, or supervene upon, that fundamental base. The arguments I make in this paper rely on a stronger interpretation of ontic structural realism, according to which structures are all that exist, and that physical objects should either be eliminated in favor of such structures, or they should be identified with such structures. Incidentally, this seems to me to be the most natural interpretation of the work I cite by Ladyman and Ross. But even if it isn’t, that wouldn’t affect the main arguments of this paper—I’m concerned less with exegesis than I am with the conceptual connections between the sort ontology we adopt and how we interpret the Question.
You also might wonder whether there is any single conception of “abstracta” at play in all of the ontologies just cited—perhaps what one of these philosophers means by “abstract” is not what other philosophers mean. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for challenging me on this point.) I suspect this concern merely indicates how vague our distinction between concreta and abstracta can turn out to be on close inspection. But if our distinction between concrete and abstract is unclear, or admits of different disambiguations, that just gives us one more reason to reject van Inwagen’s proposed uniquely correct interpretation of the Question. Van Inwagen’s interpretation of the Question (the Question = “why are there concrete objects rather than no concrete objects?”) will, on this view, admit of multiple disambiguations, depending on one’s preferred construal of the abstract/concrete distinction.
For a view to the contrary, see Priest (2014: 56).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for challenging me here.
For further defense of the claim that “how many things are there?” is a perfectly sensible question, see van Inwagen (2002).
This point was suggested to me by Callie Phillips.
“It is plausible that whatever every existent thing comes from, their source, falls outside the categories of existence and nonexistence. Moreover, we then avoid the question: why does that exist? It doesn’t exist” (Nozick 1981: 152).
Here’s how Albert puts it: “the space in which any realistic understanding of quantum mechanics is necessarily going to depict the history of the world as playing itself out ...is configuration-space. And whatever impression we have to the contrary (whatever impression we have, say, of living in a three-dimensional space, or in a four-dimensional space-time) is somehow flatly illusory” (Albert 1996: 277).
A point suggested to me by both Alex Rausch and Monica Solomon.
In addition to the quotes here, see of course the famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 1961) 6.44: “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.”
Wittgenstein goes on to deny that the Question is meaningful. In this context, however, I’m more interested in noting the phenomenology Wittgenstein associated with the Question.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Toby Brenner, Nevin Climenhaga, Peter Finocchiaro, Jack Himelright, Michael Longenecker, Chad McIntosh, Callie Phillips, Alex Rausch, Bradley Rettler, Amy Seymour, Monica Solomon, Daniel Sportiello, David Squires, Peter van Inwagen, and several anonymous referees for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Brenner, A. What Do We Mean When We Ask “Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?”. Erkenn 81, 1305–1322 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9796-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9796-0