Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
Hi, Here is the abstract of Bostrom's Infinitarian Challenge to Aggregative Ethics Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value‐bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf Bostrom's argument seems pretty solid to me. But I am not a mathematician. What do you guys think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
Thanks for your response. Bostrom considers just the idea you mention in section 4.6 called Class Action. He uses the term YOU to represent all your qualitatively identical duplicates throughout the (Level 1) multiverse. According to the class action selection rule, Even though your actions may have only finite consequences, YOUR actions will be infinite. If the various constituent person-parts of YOU are distributed roughly evenly throughout spacetime, then it is possible for you to affect the world's value-density. For example, if each person-part of YOU acts kindly, YOU may increase the well-being of an infinite number of persons such that the density of well-being in the world increases by some finite amount. (p. 39) However, this class action argument assumes that the value-density approach is an acceptable way to measure the value in a world. There are a few problems with the value-density approach. First of all, it seems to give up aggregationism (total consequentialism) in favor of average consequentialism. Average consequentialism has the counterintuitive implication that we should kill people who have below- average utility and few friends or loved ones, such as some hermits and homeless people. Secondly, the value-density approach places ethical significance on the spatiotemporal distribution of value. This is at odds with consequentialism's commitment to impartiality (the idea that equal amounts of value are equally good to promote, no matter who or where the beneficiaries are). Third, the value-density approach fails to apply to inhomogeneous infinite worlds . . . because value-density is undefined for such worlds. (16) Perhaps some other combination of approaches will be more promising. On Oct 20, 3:04 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: What about the idea that the choices you make are likely to reflect those of an infinite number of similar individuals? It's sort of like the issue of voting or trying to minimize your energy usage to help the environment, even if your individual choice makes very little difference, if everyone decides their choices don't matter and choose the less beneficial option, then this does significantly change the outcome for the worse. It makes me think of Douglas Hofstadter's notion of superrationality which he discusses in an essay in Metamagical Themas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality Hofstadter's idea here seems like a variation on Kant's idea that the moral choice is the one that it would make sense for *everyone* to adopt (seehttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#ForUniLawNat)--I just skimmed Bostrom's paper but I didn't see any detailed discussion of this sort of ethical theory, which is odd since Bostrom is a philosopher and this has been a pretty influential idea in ethics. Physicist (and many-worlds advocate) David Deutsch also makes a somewhat similar point about morality in a quantum multiverse in this article:http://www.kurzweilai.net/taming-the-multiverse “By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives,” he says. “When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen.” Jesse On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 2:23 PM, nihil0 jonathan.wol...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Here is the abstract of Bostrom's Infinitarian Challenge to Aggregative Ethics Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value‐bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf Bostrom's argument seems pretty solid to me. But I am not a mathematician. What do you guys think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
Thanks for your response. Bostrom considers the idea you mention in section 4.6 called Class Action. He uses the term YOU to represent all your qualitatively identical duplicates throughout the (Level 1) multiverse. According to the class action selection rule, Even though your actions may have only finite consequences, YOUR actions will be infinite. If the various constituent person-parts of YOU are distributed roughly evenly throughout spacetime, then it is possible for you to affect the world's value-density. For example, if each person-part of YOU acts kindly, YOU may increase the well-being of an infinite number of persons such that the density of well-being in the world increases by some finite amount. (p. 39) However, this class action argument assumes that the value-density approach is an acceptable way to measure the value in a world. There are a few problems with the value-density approach. First of all, it seems to give up aggregationism (total consequentialism) in favor of average consequentialism. Average consequentialism has the counterintuitive implication that we should kill people who have below- average utility and few friends or loved ones, such as some hermits and homeless people. Secondly, the value-density approach places ethical significance on the spatiotemporal distribution of value. (p. 16) This is at odds with consequentialism's commitment to impartiality (the idea that equal amounts of value are equally good to promote, no matter who or where the beneficiaries are). Third, the value-density approach fails to apply to inhomogeneous infinite worlds . . . because value-density is undefined for such worlds. (p. 16) Hopefully some other combination of approaches will be more promising. On Oct 20, 3:04 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: What about the idea that the choices you make are likely to reflect those of an infinite number of similar individuals? It's sort of like the issue of voting or trying to minimize your energy usage to help the environment, even if your individual choice makes very little difference, if everyone decides their choices don't matter and choose the less beneficial option, then this does significantly change the outcome for the worse. It makes me think of Douglas Hofstadter's notion of superrationality which he discusses in an essay in Metamagical Themas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality Hofstadter's idea here seems like a variation on Kant's idea that the moral choice is the one that it would make sense for *everyone* to adopt (seehttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#ForUniLawNat)--I just skimmed Bostrom's paper but I didn't see any detailed discussion of this sort of ethical theory, which is odd since Bostrom is a philosopher and this has been a pretty influential idea in ethics. Physicist (and many-worlds advocate) David Deutsch also makes a somewhat similar point about morality in a quantum multiverse in this article:http://www.kurzweilai.net/taming-the-multiverse “By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives,” he says. “When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen.” Jesse On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 2:23 PM, nihil0 jonathan.wol...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Here is the abstract of Bostrom's Infinitarian Challenge to Aggregative Ethics Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value‐bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf Bostrom's argument seems pretty solid to me. But I am not a mathematician. What do you guys think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
I think most consequentialists, especially utilitarians, consider all sentient beings to have moral status. Utilitarians say an action is morally better to the extent that it produces more well-being in the world. Anyway I would prefer to focus on whether act consequentialism implies that all actions as morally equivalent, if the universe might be canonically infinite. Jon On Oct 21, 2:50 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/20/2011 6:37 PM, nihil0 wrote: However, this class action argument assumes that the value-density approach is an acceptable way to measure the value in a world. There are a few problems with the value-density approach. First of all, it seems to give up aggregationism (total consequentialism) in favor of average consequentialism. Average consequentialism has the counterintuitive implication that we should kill people who have below- average utility and few friends or loved ones, such as some hermits and homeless people. Secondly, the value-density approach places ethical significance on the spatiotemporal distribution of value. This is at odds with consequentialism's commitment to impartiality (the idea that equal amounts of value are equally good to promote, no matter who or where the beneficiaries are). But this kind of consequentialism is already unworkable. Who counts as a beneficiary? a fetus? someone not yet conceived? chimpanzees? dogs? spiders? In practice we value the well-being of some people a lot more than others and we do so for the simple reason that it makes our life better. Brent Third, the value-density approach fails to apply to inhomogeneous infinite worlds . . . because value-density is undefined for such worlds. (16) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Joining Post
On Sep 27, 2:46 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: I think Daniel Dennett's book Elbow Room is an excellent defense of compatibilist free will and why it is the only kind worth having. Great suggestion. The wikipedia page was fairly informative, but I'll probably buy the book anyway. From what I gather, he believes the kind of free will worth wanting is the appearance (or illusion) that we can control our behavior to a large extent. I agree with him that we don't want to be uncaused causes (or uninfluenced influences) of events, which is how quantum particles appear to behave (i.e., stochastically). Everything that is physically possible is not very well defined. And in any case it doesn't follow that in an infinite universe everything possible must happen infinitely many times. For example it might be that almost all universes are uninteresting and barren and only a finite number are interesting like ours. Technically I think you are right. However, I was only talking about an infinite universe likes ours that operates in accordance with the laws of quantum physics. Let me explain by using what I've read of Victor Stenger and Brian Greene. There are three ingredients in the argument that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe happen infinitely many times. 1) There is an infinite number of Hubble volumes in our universe, which are all casually disconnected (as the theory of inflation implies). 2) There is a limit on how much matter and energy can exist within a region of space of a given size, such as a Hubble volume. 3) There is only a finite number of possible configurations of matter, due to the Uncertainty Principle. I can explain any of these ingredients in more depth if you'd like me to, but I hope you see that they lead to the conclusion that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe are realized infinitely many times. Bruno you say, To have everything happening, you need the universe being infinitely big, but also homogenous, and robust enough for making possible gigantic connections and gigantic computations, etc. I thought that physicists have observed our universe to be homogenous on very large scales, but perhaps I'm mistaken. See the Cosmological Principal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by robust enough for making possible gigantic connections and gigantic computations, etc. but perhaps the following explanation will be helpful. During the inflation right before the Big Bang, all of the now disconnected Hubble volumes were squeezed together and could affect each other. Brian Greene says they conducted a variety of cosmic handshakes, establishing, for example, a uniform temperature. Cheers, Jon On Sep 27, 2:46 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/26/2011 10:35 PM, nihil0 wrote: It's a little late for this post since I've already posted 2 or 3 things, but I figured I might as well introduce myself. I'm majoring at philosophy at the University of Michigan, however I'm studying abroad for a trimester at Oxford. I turn 21 on Oct. 4. The main questions I've been researching are the following: 1. What kind of free will is worth wanting, and do we have it, despite the deterministic evolution of the Schrodinger Equation? I think Daniel Dennett's book Elbow Room is an excellent defense of compatibilist free will and why it is the only kind worth having. 2. Recent cosmological evidence indicates that our universe is infinitely big, and everything that is physically possible happens an infinite number of times. Everything that is physically possible is not very well defined. And in any case it doesn't follow that in an infinite universe everything possible must happen infinitely many times. For example it might be that almost all universes are uninteresting and barren and only a finite number are interesting like ours. Does this imply that I can't make a difference to the total (or per capita) amount of well-being in the world? I used to be a utilitarian until I read Nick Bostrom's paper The Infinitarian Challenge to Aggretive Ethics. Dunno. 3. Can only mathematical truths be known for certain? Can you know something without knowing it for certain? Sure. In fact I'm not so sure mathematical truths can always be known for certain. For example the four-color theorem has a proof so long that it is hard to be sure it is complete and has no errors. I think it has only been checked by computer. And we know computer programs can have bugs. 4. Do the laws of physics determine (i.e., enforce) events, or do they merely describe patterns and regularities that we have observed? It must be the latter, since we change the laws of physics as we get new information. But I wouldn't say merely. It's quite a feat to have predictively successful theories. I would be grateful if anyone could shed some light
Re: Joining Post
On 9/27/2011 4:18 PM, nihil0 wrote: 1) There is an infinite number of Hubble volumes in our universe, which are all casually disconnected (as the theory of inflation implies). 2) There is a limit on how much matter and energy can exist within a region of space of a given size, such as a Hubble volume. 3) There is only a finite number of possible configurations of matter, due to the Uncertainty Principle. I can explain any of these ingredients in more depth if you'd like me to, but I hope you see that they lead to the conclusion that all quantum-physical possibilities in our universe are realized infinitely many times. On Sep 27, 7:47 pm, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: No they don't. There's an implicit assumption that what happens in these other universes has the same or similar probability distribution as we observe in ours. A reasonable assumption, but not a logically necessary one. I think it's what Bruno means by homogeneous. It's logically possible that all but a finite number of these universes are just exact copies of the same completely empty universe, for example. Brent You imply that it's logically possible that there is only a finite number of universes that are filled with matter, and you seem to think few will resemble ours. However, according to Vilenkin, Greene, and Tegmark, a generic prediction of the theory of inflation is that there is an *infinite* number of Hubble volumes (what you are calling universes). Let's call the hypothesis that all quantum-physical possibilities are realized infinitely many times the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition. Brian Greene argues for this hypothesis quite persuasively. He says, In an infinitely big universe, there are infinitely many patches [i.e., Hubble volumes]; so, with only finitely many different particles arrangements, the arrangements of particles within patches must be duplicated an infinite number of times. (The Hidden Reality, pg. 33) As for the probability distribution of matter and/or outcomes, I'll let Tegmark do the explaining: Observers living in parallel universes at Level I observe the exact same laws of physics as we do, but with different initial conditions than those in our Hubble volume. The currently favored theory is that the initial conditions (the densities and motions of different types of matter early on) were created by quantum fluctuations during the inflation epoch (see section 3). This quantum mechanism generates initial conditions that are for all practical purposes random, producing density fluctuations described by what mathematicians call an ergodic random field. Ergodic means that if you imagine generating an ensemble of universes, each with its own random initial conditions, then the probability distribution of outcomes in a given volume is identical to the distribution that you get by sampling different volumes in a single universe. In other words, it means that everything that could in principle have happened here did in fact happen somewhere else. Inflation in fact generates all possible initial conditions with non-zero probability, the most likely ones being almost uniform with fluctuations at the 10^5 level that are amplified by gravitational clustering to form galaxies, stars, planets and other structures. This means both that pretty much all imaginable matter configurations occur in some Hubble volume far away, and also that we should expect our own Hubble volume to be a fairly typical one — at least typical among those that contain observers. A crude estimate suggests that the closest identical copy of you is about ∼ 10^(10^29)m away. . . (The Multiverse Hierarchy, section 1B, http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1283) Do you still disagree with the hypothesis of Cosmic Repetition? Which parts of the argument do you accept or deny? Best regards, Jon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Joining Post
It's a little late for this post since I've already posted 2 or 3 things, but I figured I might as well introduce myself. I'm majoring at philosophy at the University of Michigan, however I'm studying abroad for a trimester at Oxford. I turn 21 on Oct. 4. The main questions I've been researching are the following: 1. What kind of free will is worth wanting, and do we have it, despite the deterministic evolution of the Schrodinger Equation? 2. Recent cosmological evidence indicates that our universe is infinitely big, and everything that is physically possible happens an infinite number of times. Does this imply that I can't make a difference to the total (or per capita) amount of well-being in the world? I used to be a utilitarian until I read Nick Bostrom's paper The Infinitarian Challenge to Aggretive Ethics. 3. Can only mathematical truths be known for certain? Can you know something without knowing it for certain? 4. Do the laws of physics determine (i.e., enforce) events, or do they merely describe patterns and regularities that we have observed? I would be grateful if anyone could shed some light on any of these questions. I'm very impressed with what I've read so far from people. Glad to be here, Jon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
posting that started this thread. What you're referring to as the empty set, I was referring to as how what has previously been called absolute non-existence or nothing completely describes, or defines, the entirety of what is present and is thus an existent state, or something. This existent state of mine is what others would call the empty set. The reason this is worth thinking about is because just saying that the empty set is the basis of existence doesn't explain why that empty set is there in the first place. This is what I was trying to get at. Additionally, there has to be some mechanism inherent in this existent state previously referred to as absolute non-existence (ie, the empty set) that allows it to replicate itself and produce the universe, energy, etc. This is needed because it appears that there's more to the universe than just a single empty existent state and that things are moving around. What I suggested in the paper at my website was that: 1. Assume what has previously been called absolute non-existence. 2. This absolute non-existence itself, and not our mind's conception of non-existence, completely describes, or defines, the entirety of what is there and is thus actually an existent state, or something. This complete definition is equivalent to an edge or boundary defining what is present and thus giving substance or existence to the the thing. This complete definition, edge, or boundary is like the curly braces around the empty set. 3. Now, by the assumption in step 1, there is also absolute non- existence all around the edge of the existent state formed in step 2. This absolute non-existence also completely describes, or defines the entirety of what is there and is thus also an existent state. That is, the first existent state has reproduced itself. I think that the existenet state that is what has been previously called absolute non-existence has the unique property of being able to reproduce itself. 4. This process continues ad infinitum in kind of a cellular automaton- like process to form in a big bang-like expansion a larger set of existent states - our universe. This is described in more detail in the paper at my website at: https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/filecabinet/why-things-... There's also some more detail on how the above process can lead to the presence of energy in the universe. Tegmark's assumption of a mathematical construct as the basis of our existence doesn't explain where this construct comes from or how it reproduces to form the universe. Wheeler's idea that the distinction between the observer and the observed could be the mechanism of giving existence to non-existence could be fit into my idea, I think, by saying that the observed is what has previously been called absolute non-existence, and the observer is the fact that this absolute non-existence completely defines the entirety of what is present and is like the edge or boundary defining what is there. Speculating even further, one could say that this edge or boundary is the same as the strings/membranes that physicists think make up the universe. Anyways, thanks again for restarting this thread! Roger On Sep 19, 2:27 am, nihil0 jonathan.wol...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone, This is my first post on the List. I find this topic fascinating and I'm impressed with everyone's thoughts about it. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but it has been discussed on a few other Everything threads. Norman Samish posted the following to the thread Tipler Weighs In on May 16, 2005 at 9:24pm: I wonder if you and/or any other members on this list have an opinion about the validity of an article athttp://www.hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm . . . I would like to continue that discussion here on this thread, because I believe the article Norman cites provides a satisfying answer the question Why does anything exist?, which is very closely related to the question Why is there something rather than nothing. The author is David Pearce, who is an active British philosopher. Here are some highlights of Pearce's answer: In the Universe as a whole, the conserved constants (electric charge, angular momentum, mass-energy) add up to/cancel out to exactly zero. . . Yet why not, say, 42, rather than 0? Well, if everything -- impossibly, I'm guessing -- added up/cancelled out instead to 42, then 42 would have to be accounted for. But if, in all, there is 0, i.e no (net) properties whatsoever, then there just isn't anything substantive which needs explaining. . . The whole of mathematics can, in principle, be derived from the properties of the empty set, Ø I think this last sentence, if true, would support Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, because if math is derivable from nothing (as Pearce thinks
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Hi everyone, This is my first post on the List. I find this topic fascinating and I'm impressed with everyone's thoughts about it. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but it has been discussed on a few other Everything threads. Norman Samish posted the following to the thread Tipler Weighs In on May 16, 2005 at 9:24pm: I wonder if you and/or any other members on this list have an opinion about the validity of an article at http://www.hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm . . . I would like to continue that discussion here on this thread, because I believe the article Norman cites provides a satisfying answer the question Why does anything exist?, which is very closely related to the question Why is there something rather than nothing. The author is David Pearce, who is an active British philosopher. Here are some highlights of Pearce's answer: In the Universe as a whole, the conserved constants (electric charge, angular momentum, mass-energy) add up to/cancel out to exactly zero. . . Yet why not, say, 42, rather than 0? Well, if everything -- impossibly, I'm guessing -- added up/cancelled out instead to 42, then 42 would have to be accounted for. But if, in all, there is 0, i.e no (net) properties whatsoever, then there just isn't anything substantive which needs explaining. . . The whole of mathematics can, in principle, be derived from the properties of the empty set, Ø I think this last sentence, if true, would support Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, because if math is derivable from nothing (as Pearce thinks) and physics is derivable from math (as Tegmark thinks) and, then physics is derivable from nothing, and presto we have a theory of everything/nothing. I think Pearce's conclusion is the following: everything that exists is a property of (or function of) the number zero (i.e., the empty set, nothing). Let's call this idea Ontological Nihilism. Russell Standish seems to endorse this idea in his book Theory of Nothing, which I'm reading. He formulates an equation for the amount of complexity a system has, and says that The complexity [i.e., information content] of the Everything is zero, just as it is of the Nothing. The simplest set is the set of all possibilities, which is the dual of the empty set. (pg. 40) He also suggests that Feynman acknowledged something like Ontological Nihilism. In vol. 2 of his lectures, Feynmann argued that the grand unified theory of physics could be expressed as a function of the number zero; just rearrange all physics equations so they equal zero, then add them all up. After all, equations have to be balanced on both sides, right? Personally, I find Ontological Nihilism a remarkably elegant, scientific and satisfying answer to the question Why is there something instead of nothing because it effectively dissolves the question. What do you think? Thanks in advance for your comments, Jon On Aug 8, 2:40 am, Roger roger...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi. I used to post to this list but haven't in a long time. I'm a biochemist but like to think about the question of Why isthere something rather than nothing? as a hobby. If you're interested, some of my ideas on this question and on Why do things exist?, infinite sets and on the relationships of all this to mathematics and physics are at: https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/ An abstract of the Why do things exist and Why istheresomething rather than nothing? paper is below. Thank you in advance for any feedback you may have. Sincerely, Roger Granet (roger...@yahoo.com) Abstract: In this paper, I propose solutions to the questions Why do things exist? and Why istheresomething rather than nothing? In regard to the first question, Why do things exist?, it is argued that a thing exists if the contents of, or what is meant by, that thing are completely defined. A complete definition is equivalent to an edge or boundary defining what is contained within and giving “substance” and existence to the thing. In regard to the second question, Why istheresomething rather than nothing?, nothing, or non-existence, is first defined to mean: no energy, matter, volume, space, time, thoughts, concepts, mathematical truths, etc.; and no minds to think about this lack-of-all. It is then shown that this non-existence itself, not our mind's conception of non-existence, is the complete description, or definition, of what is present. That is, no energy, no matter, no volume, no space, no time, no thoughts, etc., in and of itself, describes, defines, or tells you, exactly what is present. Therefore, as a complete definition of what is present, nothing, or non-existence, is actually an existent state. So, what has
