The Philosophy Discussion Forum

You can pick out any event and come up with any number of explanations. That would cause it. And the cause itself may have underlying causes. I believe in plenty of evidence for the event (no matter how simple it looks) and I don't believe in first causes very firmly (the controversial Big Bang is a case in point due to the evidence for it, but it does leave open questions).

PhilX

We can choose between two options:

1. There was a beginning of everything and this was the first cause.

2. There never was a beginning and therefore there never was any first cause.

Both are difficult to conceive.

If we dismiss the more inconceivable one then we are left with the more probable one, even if we are not quite happy with it.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:You can pick out any event and come up with any number of explanations. That would cause it. And the cause itself may have underlying causes. I believe in plenty of evidence for the event (no matter how simple it looks) and I don't believe in first causes very firmly (the controversial Big Bang is a case in point due to the evidence for it, but it does leave open questions).

PhilX

Hume points out that it might be possible to talk about cause and effect with a system. That is to say out understand of cause and effect and how it works within this universe we experience. However, it is a completely different matter to talk about the system as a whole being caused.

Kant also comes up with an objection to first cause arguments. For Kant the idea of a first cause is nonsensical given the fact that we only have knowledge of the phenomenal world that necessitates time and space explanations. It is not possible to say with any degree of certainty what might or might not exist outside of time and space.

According to the great GFWH in the beginning there was nothing. Nothing, being rational, is the objective contraddiction of itself, so that denying itself it necessarily comes to being. This countinuos passage from nothing to being, is the becoming. Becoming other from itself, nothing must necessarily become something, being.

David Handeye wrote:According to the great GFWH in the beginning there was nothing. Nothing, being rational, is the objective contraddiction of itself, so that denying itself it necessarily comes to being. This countinuos passage from nothing to being, is the becoming. Becoming other from itself, nothing must necessarily become something, being.

Sorry but I don't know what GFWH is

Ginkgo wrote:

David Handeye wrote:According to the great GFWH in the beginning there was nothing. Nothing, being rational, is the objective contraddiction of itself, so that denying itself it necessarily comes to being. This countinuos passage from nothing to being, is the becoming. Becoming other from itself, nothing must necessarily become something, being.

Sorry but I don't know what GFWH is

Georg Wilhelm Hegel

David Handeye wrote:

Ginkgo wrote:

David Handeye wrote:According to the great GFWH in the beginning there was nothing. Nothing, being rational, is the objective contraddiction of itself, so that denying itself it necessarily comes to being. This countinuos passage from nothing to being, is the becoming. Becoming other from itself, nothing must necessarily become something, being.

Sorry but I don't know what GFWH is

Georg Wilhelm Hegel

Just off the top of my head I think Hegel has an ontological argument for the existence of God, but a cosmological argument a different type of argument.

What is nothing ?

An empty space ?

Is empty space something or nothing ?

duszek wrote:What is nothing ?

An empty space ?

Is empty space something or nothing ?

According to Lawrence Krauss' book, "A Universe From Nothing": "Nothing isn't nothing anymore"

Ginkgo wrote: Just off the top of my head I think Hegel has an ontological argument for the existence of God, but a cosmological argument a different type of argument.

Yes, that's true. Note, he never wrote the word "creation".

The word "nothing" should be used in a more precise sense.

There is also the problem with the conservation (or preservation ?) of energy.

Could energy come into being from ... lack of energy ?

duszek wrote:
Could energy come into being from ... lack of energy ?

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

duszek wrote:What is nothing?

That's it. Nothing isn't. It cannot exist. It must come to being something. There is no lack of energy. Hegel said, the thought is the power of negativity, 'cause thought is able to see the negative even there where negative isn't. For instance the negative of life is death, but death does exist, it's not negative, it's something really going on.

Ginkgo wrote:

duszek wrote:
Could energy come into being from ... lack of energy ?

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

I tried to avoid the word "nothing".

Can energy come into being out of nothing ?

Out of emptiness ?
Out of vacuum ?

Can energy have a beginning ?

Or is it something eternal that only gets transformed ?

David Handeye wrote:

duszek wrote:What is nothing?

That's it. Nothing isn't. It cannot exist. It must come to being something. There is no lack of energy. Hegel said, the thought is the power of negativity, 'cause thought is able to see the negative even there where negative isn't. For instance the negative of life is death, but death does exist, it's not negative, it's something really going on.

How about:

Nothing is lack of something or lack of anything.

"Nothing" is a verbal expression of negativity.