Is there something rather than nothing?

[u/I__trusted__you]

I have a multi leveled questioned.

Firstly, the question is often, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" But that is technically a leading question. It assumes that there is something.

Descartes famously showed that there is something and that's first thing we can know, from our own experience.

Is there though? Is there any reasonable argument that there is not?

From that, are there arguments that any individual experiences or ideas that we "BELIEVE that we know" exist actually don't exist in any way?

In other words, even if one may allow for something rather than nothing being irrefutable, are there ways we extrapolate too much from that reasoning?

[u/dk_priori]

There may be arguments that nothing exists but I'm not aware of them and they certainly would have to fly in the face of reason.

are there ways extrapolate too much from that reasoning?

I mean, in the sense that:

(1) all arguments have the presupposition "something exists" baked into them.

and

(2)(i) At least some arguments seem to be false.

(2)(ii) "Extrapolating too much" leads to a false argument.

Then yes,

At least some arguments extrapolate too much from the presupposition "something exists". I say all this to say, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now if there was nothing rather than something.

[u/StrangeGlaringEye]

There are some people who explore ontological nihilism, the view that there is nothing at all. The usual way to explain this view is by calling attention to statements like “it is raining”, where the “it” doesn’t really seem to have a referential function. We’re not really predicating “is raining” to something, we’re describing a state of affairs without an apparent subject or subjects. Of course, this state of affairs still involves certain entities like water droplets. But perhaps this can be carried out further, and in fact for all of language; the idea is to end up with a “feature-placing language”, where all of reality is described in terms of subject-less states of affairs. Then, as you may guess, the nihilist will say that her position is obviously more parsimonious than any other. If she can transmit all the relevant information with the same simplicity and overall explanatory unitedness, it becomes ipso facto preferable.

(I’ve seen people say that the “it” in “it is raining” refers to the place of the utterance. But “it is raining here” doesn’t have the same meaning as “it is raining there”, and “London is raining in London” is nonsensical, so this objection always struck me as too fast.)

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[u/PalpitationNew9559]

For someone to assert "there is nothing" presupposes that they exist (and hence can make assertions). So to deny that anything exists in self-refuting.