Brute Facts: Why is There Something Rather than Nothing?

I doubt that we truly can imagine anything that defies the laws of physics/reality. It seems that we may be mistaken in the commonly held conception that we can.

Example of something physically impossible that can be imagined?

 

Levitation, limitless energy, invisibility... there's quite a lot of things, actually. And I'm talking about these things as we imagine them, so not, like, if someone can make a proton invisible or levitate a strand of carbon over a ten-mile wide spinning disc or whatever. That's the thing really. In the context in which they're imagined, these things can't happen, and outside that context, we probably wouldn't recognise them as happening.

An egg unscrambling itself. There you go. We can clearly visualise how that would work, but it's never going to happen.

 

Can you really imagine these things, though? You've never seen someone levitate, so how could you know that you were really imagining what it would be like?

I doubt that we can clearly visualize how an egg unscrambling itself would appear -- certainly not clear enough that it would be a perfect mimicry of what that reality would be like.

So I basically think that we can't imagine anything that is impossible, precisely because it is impossible. Such a thing couldn't come from anywhere, or it would have to exist. We can make pictures in our minds of things that are only possible in our minds, but they are still possible in that way. But like, an egg in reality and an egg imagined are not the same things -- you shouldn't even call an egg imagined an "egg".

 

god

 

You're kinda saying here that we can't imagine anything physically impossible because we don't know what the physically impossible thing would look like... I mean, if it's physically impossible, it wouldn't look like anything, right? There'd be no "right" way to imagine it.

It is not impossible to imagine, to visualise or even feel the sensation we'd associate with being a person who rises effortlessly above the ground. We imagine flying in our dreams all the time, but we can't do it and are unlikely to ever be able to given the laws of physics as they stand. It can feel as real as anything, but by your reasoning, either we shouldn't be able to imagine it, or the fact that we can imagine it would indicate that it can be done. I'm pretty sure neither of those is the case.

Well no, you're not imagining yourself imagining something physically impossible, so what you're imagining is physically impossible. I'd question a definition of "the physically possible" that incorporates, inherently, anything that one imagines, purely because one can imagine it. I mean, yes, if that is your definition then your point makes sense. I just don't think many people would accept that definition.

Special effects is a consideration here though. Once you have CGI going on, you can provide a visual image of something that can't actually happen, and isn't happening. You can show light stopping in otherwise normal conditions, you can show people flying, and to all intents and purposes they look real, or at least, they look how we'd expect them too. If I film someone scrambling an egg, and then run it backwards, then there we are: I have a visual stimulus for what unscrambling an egg would look like. And once we're used to simple effects, like film running backwards, we don't even need to see the film to visualise, say, a man "uneating" a sandwich or "unbaking" a cake. These are process that do not exist in nature, but which we can imagine by virtue of having seen other processes reversed.

 

teleportation, the sacrament of levitation, direct and unaided by any physical means sculpting of tangable material substances and objects.

those are just the first few off the top of my head. and i'm not saying i know anything of the sort that they can't be done, only that i've not seen them happen while fully awaike in this universe, though i have seen, and not really given a second thought to seeing them happen in my own dreams, and not at all unusually hearing other people describe dreaming of such things.

even actually making something out of nothing. all of us CAN imagine being omnipotent, and too damd many people seem to not be capable of realizing the're NOT infallable. omniscience might be a bit more of a stretch, not to imagine it possible, but anything resembling what it would actually be like, however hard the human ego tries to imagine THAT one.

not everyone has the same power and capacity to imagine, but i have no difficultiy imagining, and imagining living in, a parallel universe, where three lobed bifurcators are real solid objects, and not confined to existing only as two dimentional illusions.

most if not all, of the things that gratify me to imagine, could, or might be could, exist in this universe too, are well within the capabilities of real living sentient humans on this earth, even if some, many, of them, don't quite exist yet, because of our backward headed priorities.

some, like these personal computers, which no such thing as existed when i was born, only waited for the opportunities of time to come into existence. others await the evolution of social perspectives.

i don't expect perpetual motion or anything resembling it, but i do believe an understanding of the physics that MIGHT make 'anti-gravity' and 'faster then light' possible, might come about through the combination of ongoing scientific discouveries and underlying changes in dominant cultural values.

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I guess that is what I'm saying.

I disagree. Such a sensation as flying could be experienced, perhaps via some incredible flying suit, or just because if you can imagine something strongly enough, it will occur. We could also, perhaps, create a virtual world which could simulate the experience of flying closely to how we imagined it. Though again I think it would be difficult to recreate it with 100% accuracy.

So it's kind of a question of "what you're really imagining" also. I can imagine a guy flying -- am I imagining a guy flying outside my window, or am I imagining Superman flying in a movie? How can you tell?

Personally, my imagination isn't even strong enough that it forms solid objects of any adequate duration that they could honestly be said to be much of anything. They're barely there. If we didn't have language I might not have any means of grasping them at all.

?!?

I was thinking of this same thing earlier this morning. But I think that does more to display the discrepancy of how we would imagine an egg frying backwards and what it would actually be like. Even after viewing the video I still wouldn't have a very good picture of what actually happened in my imagination. I'd just have the vague outline of some chunks of shiny whiteness (scrambled eggs) moving towards each other, where they reform (though I can't imagine this at all and skip to...,) a nebulous whiteness (egg) and then a shiny yellow blob (yolk). And so on and so forth.

 

i'm sorry, but i DO experience those things, not only in high degree, but also in all their infintisimal, minute and endlessly diverse detail. just exactly as if you and i were both there and i could hand them to you.

if you're saying i can't imagine how they'd feel to someone ELSE in THIS univerese if they could be done in this universe, isn't that kind of circular logic, see logic circular?

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But that is kind of cyclic. You're saying that we can't imagine anything physically impossible, and then saying that being able to imagine something proves it must be physically possible.

OK, so say someone invents an incredible flying suit. What if I then imagine myself flying but without the incredible flying suit? I mean, how hard is it to imagine something and then change what you imagine.

Uh... not really sure what you mean here, tbh.

Well, you said:

"We can make pictures in our minds of things that are only possible in our minds, but they are still possible in that way."

The thing that's possible in this instance is not the thing that we're imagining, but the act of imagining it. So me being able to imagine something doesn't make the thing physically possible; it just proves that it is possible for me to imagine it.

I like your username, btw.

Well that was kind of my point. The fact that it wouldn't happen the way we imagine it would indicate that what we're imagining is physically impossible, wouldn't it? I may have misread what you were saying before, but it seems like you're saying that the thing not only has to be physically impossible but also happen in your imagination exactly the way it would if it wasn't physically impossible, even though there's no way we can actually know that... you see my problem here, right?

I think I have a pretty good visual of what it would look like for an egg to unscramble. I may be wrong about it, but that only really supports my argument that I can imagine something which can never actually happen.

 

Sometimes things do move in circles. But yeah, maybe I am. If we can have a perfect image in our minds of something, we must be seeing it. And outside of that, to describe what we're seeing, I think it becomes so vague that it isn't known to be impossible. Or you could be forced to get so specific that you stumble upon how that impossible thing might be achieved.

But disregarding that, whether your description becomes vague or specific, what is left is something unique in the mind, which is still possible, but all it is is something in the mind.

I think we're saying the same thing here. I'm saying the thing being imagined is also possible, but because the thing being imagined is purely imaginary, and obviously the purely imaginary happens. This is confusing.

Thanks... It's okay...I just couldn't think of anything at the time.

No, because we can't say what we're actually imagining. It's weird, but we never actually imagine a scrambled egg reassembling. So how can we even speak of it? I guess just because we have a reference point in that things can be broken down and reassembled, and an egg happens to be a thing. But in your imagination, you might be seeing some kind of reassembling nano-egg (?).

Like I said, I can't even envision the reassembling, so all I see is a white chunky stuff (maybe?). And then something sort of like an egg, maybe, though not even. So I have to wonder if the action of this white substance reassembling occurs in anyone's imagination -- there is at least no way to prove what occurs within one's own imagination. Otherwise you're just left with chunks of "eggs" which definitely exist.

I'm not sure if I do. I'm saying that anything that happens in your imagination must be physically possible, as all it is is images and not necessarily the thing you are saying those images are. Those images are either possible strictly within the mind or have a corollary in the physical world. But at no point is anything impossible occurring. You can't imagine impossible images. Just like you can't drive impossible cars or sing impossible songs, etc.

Yeah, I could be wrong too, but it's an interesting question and fun to think over.

On the subject of eggs:

http://www.bearsandbuds.com/March2008/Eggs08.asp

 

Hey CS,

1. But is it not the nature of philosophical inquiry to be concerned with these types of questions?


2. Would you say that not having a scientific explanation is the same as not having a metaphysical explanation? Would you say that metaphysical claims are reducible to scientific claims?


3. Why do you suppose the same psychological desire for metaphysical satisfaction that leads some to posit God, terminates at God? I.e., the God postulate has it's own difficult metaphysical problems to deal with, and one is in a sense trading one set of problems for another.

 

Only if one does trade it. Organised religion may require us to ignore science or treat its truth as parables, but personal belief does not. We may believe in a creator to fill in the blanks.

Of course, the obvious answer to the opening thread is that science hasn't found a satisfactory answer yet. I read a book of interviews with a Hindu wiseman and his constant argument against science was "you say you can create, but you have not done it, so you are lying", which is fairly obviously nonsense. Same difference here; we use God as an excuse not to look for these satisfactory answers, which is fine as long as not everyone does it, and because ultimately they do not really impact on our lives.

Have to say though, I think there will be a point when we discover that it actually is "turtles all the way down"; that at some point, we will discover that all matter and energy is composed of the same substance at different intensities, or otherwise that ultimately we will have to accept that "it just is".

 

Greetings SelfControl,

Good point. But don't you think anyone astute enough to take notice of certain metaphysical problems inherent in a naturalized metaphysic will do the same in a super-naturalize one? I mean, just take a look at some of the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology literature. If the only motive in positing God is a psychological desire for satisfaction in our metaphysical endeavors, then certainly positing God really is of no help in this regard.

You may be correct here, but I think CS's point in labeling certain things "brute facts" was to say that that is just the way things are--i.e. there is really no point in asking certain questions. Perhaps like asking why a proton has a certain "charge"--the answer to that question is, there really isn’t any "reason," that's just the sort of thing that protons do.