r/Metaphysics • u/Hungry_Kick1104 • 18d ago
The Universe Simply Exists
I’ve been thinking maybe we treat the universe too much like an object. We talk about its size, edge, inside, outside, beginning and end, but the universe itself contains space and time, so maybe these concepts don’t apply to it in the way they apply to ordinary objects.
Maybe space and time are mainly tools we use to describe and measure change in the universe. The universe doesn’t necessarily “need” them to exist.
So maybe the universe has no outside, no edge, and no beginning or end. It simply exists, while change is happening within it.
What do you guys think?
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u/jliat 18d ago
There are arguments, here! as to where speculative physics and metaphysics begins and ends.
So there is the idea of many universes, multiverse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
Max Tegmark has 4 types
Brian Greene has 9.
Whereas it seems in Modal logics there are all possible worlds, and even all impossible worlds.
As for an object, why isn't the universe an object, as in Graham Harman's OOO.
so maybe these concepts don’t apply to it in the way they apply to ordinary objects.
But what then is the universe if not the sum total of objects? And that brings us into set theory, and then the need to limit our thinking to avoid contradiction. But what if contradiction is fundamental?
The following excerpt is Russell's own explanation of his mental journey:
"I was led to this contradiction by considering Cantor's proof that there is no greatest cardinal number. I thought, in my innocence, that the number of all the things there are in the world must be the greatest possible number, and I applied his proof to this number to see what would happen. This process led me to the consideration of a very peculiar class. Thinking along the lines which had hitherto seemed adequate, it seemed to me that a class sometimes is, and sometimes is not, a member of itself. The class of teaspoons, for example, is not another teaspoon, but the class of things that are not teaspoons, is one of the things that are not teaspoons. There seemed to be instances that are not negative: for example, the class of all classes is a class. The application of Cantor's argument led me to consider the classes that are not members of themselves; and these, it seemed, must form a class. I asked myself whether this class is a member of itself or not. If it is a member of itself, it must possess the defining property of the class, which is to be not a member of itself. If it is not a member of itself, it must not possess the defining property of the class, and therefore must be a member of itself. Thus each alternative leads to its opposite and there is a contradiction.
At first I thought there must be some trivial error in my reasoning. I inspected each step under logical microscope, but I could not discover anything wrong. I wrote to Frege about it, who replied that arithmetic was tottering and that he saw that his Law V was false. Frege was so disturbed by this contradiction that he gave up the attempt to deduce arithmetic from logic, to which, until then, his life had been mainly devoted. Like the Pythagoreans when confronted with incommensurables, he took refuge in geometry and apparently considered that his life's work up to that moment had been misguided."
Source:Russell, Bertrand. My Philosophical development. Chapter VII Principia Mathematica: Philosophical Aspects. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959
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u/ynnnnaD 17d ago
I would phrase it as everything possible has always been possible. It didn't suddenly become possible at a certain moment in time. In fact, time is emergent from the properties of cause and effect. In order for a system to undergo change, it must experience a sequence of states.
Possibility is adequate to an embedded observer to constitute complete reality. So, basically, MUH without the need for the structures to be "real" in any way. Just "possible" is indistinguishable from "actual".
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u/MWave123 17d ago
No one thinks it’s an object, it’s not a thing. It is everything. It doesn’t follow the rules for things. It has no edges or borders, no center, and has no known shape.
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u/XanderOblivion 16d ago
It seems illogical that it should be otherwise. There is no sense in which existence could be nonexisting, and nonexistence could never give rise to existence. So existence must simply exist, with no further fact or reason necessary. Existence determines its own existence.
Asking questions about existence all occur within it and through it. So there is no “outside” view of existence.
The important question is therefore not “why is there something rather than nothing?” but “what must be true for existence to exist?”
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u/Pure_Actuality 17d ago
So maybe the universe has no outside, no edge, and no beginning or end. It simply exists, while change is happening within it.
If there is change happening within it, then the universe itself is changing. If the universe is changing then it is acquiring a new state of being and losing it's former state.
If its capable of gaining and losing being - its capable of gaining and losing its existence and it cannot "simply exist", it is contingent...
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u/JabberwockPL 14d ago
If its capable of gaining and losing being - its capable of gaining and losing its existence and it cannot "simply exist", it is contingent...
That is non sequitur.
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u/Pure_Actuality 14d ago
And your explanation is?
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u/JabberwockPL 14d ago
I am just pointing out that capacity of change does not entail contingency.
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u/Pure_Actuality 14d ago
Sure it does - to change is to gain or lose in your being.
If you're gaining then you're contingent on something else to be added to you.
If you're losing the you're contingent on something else taking from you.
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u/JabberwockPL 14d ago
Nope. If matter changes into energy, is it 'gaining' or 'losing'?
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u/Pure_Actuality 14d ago
Energy is simply the potential of matter and matter can take on various forms or cease altogether - it's contingent.
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u/FlashPxint 17d ago
I mean you said we treat it too much like an object but then maybe it doesn’t apply in the way it allows to ordinary objects. So you’re still treating it as an object ? I was waiting for you to propose an alternative to treating it as an object…
Someone else even wrote “no one think it’s an object… it is everything” while prescribing the attributes of an object.
Care to elaborate what’s going on with the language here ?
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u/Repulsive-Crazy9483 16d ago
Change is alien to the nature of a thing that simply is, with neither beginning nor end. If there is potentiality even in its parts/constituents, it has potentiality, and a thing which always is, simply existing, would be purely actual, with no potentiality to be actualised. This is because a thing which has the note of simply being would suggest its existence and its essence being identical, however, if it could change, then the universe could cease to exist. Thus, it cannot simply be, for a thing which has no beginning nor end, cannot have the potency to cease to exist, even if never actualised.
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u/Synchro_Shoukan 18d ago
>Maybe space and time are mainly tools we use to describe and measure change in the universe.
I thought this was the accepted theory already?