While thinking about how the universe works and questioning it I have come to the conclusion that it might not actually sense and cannot ever make sense. It all starts with the question "Why?", you can tell me how but then there is also a why for that how answer. "The apple falls because of gravity." makes sense... but what is gravity "Gravity is caused by the curvature of space, curved by matter/energy." but the further and further you go the more and more specific it becomes. Until you reach this question "Why not anything else?"... so now you could suggest a multiverse with every possible configuration and thats why its so specific... but then you have to ask "How does this multiverse work and why does it exist"... then "Why can't nothing exist everywhere and there not be a multiverse?" and finally a more abstract one "Why can't space be made of yarn and math not be able to exist in this universe?"... The only thing that would fundamentally make sense would be nothing at all, literally. If nothing existed it would make more sense. But then you have to ask "Why can't there be something"... Its a question with no answer that completely destroys the very goal of making sense of everything at a fundamental scale. So the only way out is to acknowledge that our universe isn't based on the question why and that asking for a sensible answer isn't the right question to ask in the first place. That everything in the biggest and smallest picture just doesn't make sense. Which is hard to grasp and I am unsure of it being the right conclusion to this simple question.
-
2Hello, and welcome on Philosophy.SE. Your question has been brought to our attention. The reason may be that it is hardly a question that can be definitely answered, which would be bad for a Q&A format like SE is one (see the tour and the help center). Reformulating the question towards whether philosophy tackled this problem would help. Immanuel Kant, for example, wrote 200 years ago that it is just our mind asking for reasons all the time, whereas nature does not necessarily work that way. – Philip Klöcking Sep 23 '17 at 20:17
-
2So please, try to ask a concise question (some formatting would be perfect) and try to omit unnecessary noise that may be related to, but not crucial for your actual question. – Philip Klöcking Sep 23 '17 at 20:20
-
If one feels that even he himself is not real, reality is nonsense. Senses must work to feel something is nonsense. So there must be a reality even behind nonsense. – SonOfThought Sep 24 '17 at 10:07
-
All these questions and problems can be dealt with, but you need to chase the answers into stange places. Yes. it makes no sense that anything exists. So run with this. Just do the sums. If nothing really exists then ...what? Which philosophy claims that nothing really exists? It is a popular one, but one that is usually disallowed and not studied within the walls of academe. I'd recommend Paul Davies' 'Mind of God' as a starting point. – Sep 24 '17 at 10:40
-
I wasn't really saying that nothing exist but that if nothing exists then it would make more sense than anything else, but still nonsense. Its this that makes it seem that sense is not part of the fundamental nature of anything that is based on making sense. And that a world founded on nonsense is more sensible than one that isn't. – Terran Sep 24 '17 at 22:17
-
I get the idea but, as I say, feel that you have to chase these questions into strange places. What I see is that many people ask these questions and are baffled but do not pursue them one inch further than the walls of Plato's Academy, where they are considered unanswerable. I think philosophers need to get out more. – Sep 27 '17 at 12:38
2 Answers
Here is a beautiful talk of Feynman about chains of why questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM
In his case the chain ends in why magnetic and electric forces attract:
I can't explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we said the magnets attract like rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands. I'd soon be in trouble. And secondly, if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain. So I have cheated very badly, you see. So I am not going to be able to give you an answer to why magnets attract each other except to tell you that they do. And to tell you that that's one of the elements in the world – there are electrical forces, magnetic forces, gravitational forces, and others, and those are some of the parts. If you were a student, I could go further. I could tell you that the magnetic forces are related to the electrical forces very intimately, that the relationship between the gravity forces and electrical forces remains unknown, and so on. But I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you're more familiar with, because I don't understand it in terms of anything else that you're more familiar with.
As for existence vs non-existence, according to eastern thought / religious philosophy, in particular buddhism and hinduism, the nature of nature (pun intended) transcends the human concepts of existence and non-existence.
For example in The Royal Seal of Mahamudra, an 18th century Tibetan manuscript:
The evident concept-free wisdom of mind essence does not fall into any extreme whatsoever, whether of existence or nonexistence, being or nonbeing, eternalism or nihilism. (p.263)
In shows up in western thought as well in the claim that the world is fundamentally unintelligible. For example as put by Chomsky:
Instead of trying to show that the world is intelligible to us, we recognized that it’s not intelligible to us. But we just say, ‘Well, you know, unfortunately that’s the way it works. I can’t understand it but that’s the way it works.’ And then the aim of science is reduced from trying to show that the world is intelligible to us, which it is not, to trying to show that there are theories of the world which are intelligible to us. That’s what science is: It’s the study of intelligible theories which give an explanation of some aspect of reality.
And by David Hume:
While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.
So yeah, according to some, nature fundamentally transcends our capacity for making sense of it, and therefore you could say that it cannot make sense.
- 4,786
- 16
- 27
-
I like to think about the computer from Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the question they asked it; "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything" and it replies "42"... what if it said anything else? It would make as much sense as saying 42 since any reply could be questioned and it is very much based on perspective and that the computer then says that they asked the wrong question. While Adams may not have been thinking to this extent I like to sometimes conclude that perhaps asking "Why?" is the wrong question. (cont.) – Terran Sep 24 '17 at 22:32
-
(cont.) And that the universe need not be founded on sense and thus it is very convincing nonsense. A nonsensical world with magic has it easy since they could just say "Magic!" but we live in a very grounded world so it must be a very convincingly sensible nonsensical world at that. – Terran Sep 24 '17 at 22:34
-
@nir Good answer, but Buddhism and Hinduism do not say the world is unintelligible. They say it is unintelligible to a mind that is uninformed by a realisation of 'nonduality' and unable to see beyond dualism. It would be dualism that renders the word unintelligible and nondualism that solves the problem. . – Sep 27 '17 at 12:44
-
@peterj, what do you have to say about the following by Chomsky? "the galilean model of intelligibility has a corollary: when mechanism fails, understanding fails." - On Nature and Language in other words, the world transcends mechanism, logic, and description, and as such it is unintelligible. as far as I know that is inline with both buddhism and hinduism. in what sense is that statement wrong? – nir Sep 27 '17 at 17:28
-
What if it is just simply that sense, reason, questions, and answers are just a human idea and not actually relatable to the real world at a certain point? Not incomprehensible but just not where we have been looking. – Terran Sep 29 '17 at 22:28
-
@nir The world would be intelligible. It would outrun the intellect but this property of the world would be intelligible. Nagarjuna explains how to make it intelligible. It is just that this intelligibility would depend on more than the intellect. There would be a sense in which it is beyond analysis, but it would not be forever beyond comprehension. It would be a strange world-theory that claimed the world is unintelligible and almost the opposite of a theory. . . – Oct 02 '17 at 11:16
-
-
@nir The usual definition. 'Able to be understood'. Not everyone finds the world unintelligible. The perennial claim that by reduction the world transcends the categories on which the intellect depends is no problem, for it is what renders the world intelligible. If we say otherwise we end up with the metaphysical muddle we see in professional philosophy, which is unintelligible. If Buddhism was the claim that the world is unintelligible it would be an absurd and self-defeating philosophy, and there would be no explanation for its extensive literature devoted to explaining it. – Oct 03 '17 at 12:18
-
@peterj, So according to you, professional philosophy is unintelligible but reality is intelligible. is that correct? If so I believe you got it upside down. Either we do not understand each other, or you misunderstand Buddhism, or at least its Tibetan traditions such as mahamudra and dzogchen. anyway, the usual definition of intelligible that you give is obscure since it depends on the term understand which we unfortunately do not clearly understand. – nir Oct 03 '17 at 15:48
-
According to Merriam Webster intelligible also means "apprehensible by the intellect only" which is better if by intellect they mean to say: in terms of concepts, reason, logic, etc... As far as you know, is self-knowing awareness a thing that can be understood in terms of concepts, reason and logic according to mahamudra and dzogchen? – nir Oct 03 '17 at 15:54
-
@ nir Professional philosophy is incomprehensible or, equivalently, its practitioners cannot make sense of philosophy. This is well-known and is easy to verify. Nobody in this tradition has even written an article or book claiming they comprehend philosophy. Rather, they claim it is incomprehensible. There is no evidence that the world is incomprehensible and many people claim to comprehend it. Regardless of the world itself what is not arguable is whether metaphysics is intelligible. It can be understood and it is intelligible. – Oct 04 '17 at 11:08
-
@nir - The intellect cannot take us all the way to understanding, but it can make sense of what it learns through 'self-knowing'. Of course it can; Otherwise nobody would be able to understand the world. – Oct 04 '17 at 11:11
-
@PeterJ, I fail to make sense of your comments. for example: "The intellect cannot take us all the way to understanding, but it can make sense of what it learns through 'self-knowing'". Here are a few quotes from mahamudra and dzogchen manuscripts that talk of a "something" that is beyond words and description. how such a thing can be in your mind the subject of full comprehension by the intellect is simply beyond me, and unfortunately the medium of comments does not seem to be a good platform to bridge our miscommunication. – nir Oct 04 '17 at 20:00
-
"Prajnaparamita, beyond words, thoughts, and description, Unoriginated and unceasing, its very nature is like space." (the royal seal of mahamudra, p.245); "The ultimate does not lie within the field of the logicians’ conceptual analyses and investigations" (the royal seal of mahamudra, p. 229); "This is the simplicity free from complexity, beyond expression, thought or description." (dzogchen, the flight of the garuda, p. 35) – nir Oct 04 '17 at 20:00
-
"the nature of awakened mind, which perceives them, is in essence ineffability, like that of space. Know this to be beyond description, imagination, or expression." (dzogchen, longchen rabjam, the precious treasury of the way of abiding (p. 5) – nir Oct 04 '17 at 20:19
-
@nir - Your quotes do not change my view. I'd agree (of course) that the awakened mind is 'beyond description, imagination or expression', and also that it stands beyond logical or conceptual analysis, but we're talking here about intelligibility. It is intelligible that the awakened mind is like this, at least to the mind that is awakened. . . – Oct 05 '17 at 11:08
-
@peterj, it appears to me that you are claiming something along this line: primordial self knowing awareness is unintelligible, but the statement "primordial self knowing awareness is unintelligible" is itself perfectly intelligible, and therefore reality is perfectly intelligible. is that correct? – nir Oct 05 '17 at 19:35
-
@nir - I meant that Reality is intelligible. But only if the intellect is informed by direct knowledge of what cannot be acquired via the intellect. Perhaps it is best stated as 'metaphysics is intelligible', which simplifies the claim. – Oct 06 '17 at 12:07
-
Well, some time after posting this question, and receiving an answer, I have come to an interesting conclusion. While there may be no answer that "makes sense", I have narrowed down what exactly is the thing that doesn't "make sense". Its time... This is less philosophical at that point and rather more physical. If you take out time, all the things that don't make sense goes with it... So, we know its time, but why? Well thats just what I have determined after this amount of time... – Terran Dec 27 '17 at 19:14
Basically what you're describing is the Munchhausen trilemma:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma
Knowledge is limited.
- 3,001
- 1
- 13
- 25
-
Both replies are correctly address what I was asking in two complementary ways. Thanks for pointing me out to the essence of my dilemma. – Terran Sep 24 '17 at 22:23