Lutiferre
11-04-2009, 01:09 PM
The Fundamental Question
Arthur Witherall
artwitherall@yahoo.com
This is a draft of a paper which will appear
shortly in the Journal of Philosophical Research.
Many philosophers have expressed a feeling of awe when they come to address what Martin Heidegger has called the fundamental question of metaphysics: "why is there something instead of nothing?".1 Some have attempted to answer the question, and in finding an answer, their feeling could be diminished, or otherwise transformed into a kind of religious awe. Others have dismissed the question as meaningless or at least unanswerable2 and hence feel nothing special when they address it. Ludwig Wittgenstein's response is a complex one, for he both rejects the verbal expression of awe as a piece of nonsense, but insists that the feeling itself has an absolute significance.3 He connects it with the nonsense of ethics, which he says "...is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting and would not for my life ridicule it".4
There are many possible answers to the question, ranging from attempts to dissolve it to rationalist explanations of the world as a whole. Their variety helps to illuminate the conditions under which a feeling of awe is appropriate. Much depends upon how the problem is interpreted, and what is thought to be at stake. For example, an anti-metaphysical positivist response would dissolve the question as meaningless, and hence implicitly suggest that any feeling of awe here is irrational and inappropriate. Heidegger, on the other hand, claims that philosophy itself is at stake:
To philosophize is to ask "Why are there essents rather than nothing?" Really to ask this question signifies: a daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our questioning to the very end. Where such an attempt occurs there is philosophy.5
It is not surprising, given this view, that he regards the question as deeply significant. Nevertheless, Heidegger does not propose an answer himself, and one is left with the impression that his feeling of depth or awe is caused partly by the fact that his own mind is stalemated.
The attitudes of Heidegger and the positivists may be contrasted with the work of those like Nicholas Rescher,6 Robert Nozick7 and John Leslie,8 who have constructed elaborate theories that actually answer the question straightforwardly. They do not leave the question in the realm of the mysterious and terrible, but make use of traditional explanatory mechanisms such as universal laws (Rescher), probabilities (Nozick) and teleology (Leslie). I will discuss their arguments in what follows, but my main concern is not the question of their success or failure in explaining the existence of the world. My focus is on the question of whether their explanations have succeeded in eliminating the awe that accompanies the fundamental question itself, or have themselves given expression to it in some other form.
In this paper I will argue that a feeling of awe at the existence of something rather than nothing is appropriate and desirable. By this I mean psychologically appropriate and desirable, given our normal understanding of the meaning of the "why" question. I shall not construct an answer to the question, nor even a complete taxonomy of answers, but this does not mean that I regard the question as being something completely beyond our comprehension. Even if it is impossible to supply an answer, the fact that we respond to it means that something, however odd or inexplicable, has been understood. As long as we feel something about this issue, there must be a serious problem of explanation or a profound mystery which exercises the mind. If the question arouses nothing at all, no awe, no anxiety, no bewilderment or surprise, then we must hold a kind of positivist position which claims that the question is a piece of nonsense, and thus denies that any feeling of wonder at the existence of the world is needed. I will argue that this position is inadequate.
The structure of my argument is defensive rather than constructive. It is prima facie plausible to hold that the fundamental question ought to inspire awe, given what it means, and given that many philosophers have expressed such a feeling. I believe that there are only two conditions under which the question might conceivably fail to be awesome to one who considers it seriously. Firstly, if someone were to believe that the question is meaningless, then feelings of wonder or awe would be inappropriate. This is relatively straightforward, but some discussion of Wittgenstein's position is necessary, for he appears to believe that wondering at the existence of the world is some kind of nonsense, even though he gives expression to it.
Secondly, if someone were to believe that no explanation is required for the existence of the world, then they might fail to have any feelings of significance about the "why" question. This position could be adopted if one believed that it was necessarily true that something exists. In response to this, I will argue that there are reasons to be perplexed or awed even if one holds that it is necessarily true that something exists. For example, the position of Baruch Spinoza, which denies that there are contingent truths, and appears to entail that no explanations are needed, nevertheless permits a (reinterpreted) sense of awe at the very fact of absolute determinism. In my final section, I will examine some modern responses to the question, with the aim of showing that any tenable answer to the question, including the necessitarian position, must deepen our sense of mystery and our sense of the significance of existence itself.
1 Sense and Nonsense
It is arguable that if the fundamental question has no meaning, then it can invoke no feelings. Thus one way of denying that a feeling of awe is appropriate is to deny that the question of why the world exists makes sense. Senseless questions should provoke no response, beyond an expression of incomprehension. The intelligibility of the fundamental question has been denied by some philosophers. Paul Edwards, for example, argues that there is a logical grammar to the word "why" which has been violated in this case, rendering the question meaningless.9 He claims that when we ask of anything x why it happened or why it is what it is, we presuppose that there are antecedent conditions other than x which can explain x. This is partly what is meant by using the word "why", and if there are no such conditions, then it loses its normal meaning. In the case of the question of why there is something rather than nothing, there can be no antecedent conditions of this kind, because they too must be included in the "something" which must be explained.10 Edwards thus concluded that the question has no cognitive meaning, since it violates the conditions under which a "why" question can make sense.
It can be replied that this conclusion is too strong. Any antecedent conditions that are used to explain why there is something are also brought into question, it is true, but this does not entail that the question itself is without meaning. There are several other possibilities: the question might be answered by an explanation which invokes conditions that are themselves self-explanatory, or conditions that are natural (in Nozick's sense11) and hence require no further explanation, or the question might have an abnormal answer, invoking an explanation that does not use standard antecedent conditions. All that Edwards has shown is that the fundamental question violates the normal conditions under which "why" questions can have answers. But a question that does not have a normal answer is not necessarily meaningless. Extraordinary puzzles and situations transcend the conditions that he cites, and may force us to think about explanation in different terms. So his claim that the fundamental "why" question is unintelligible is not justified by his argument. Furthermore, the claim is unlikely to be defensible without the imposition of implausible restrictions upon what counts as a legitimate explanation.
Edwards makes it clear that his rejection of this question is not based upon "...an empiricist meaning criterion or on any question-begging assumptions in favor of naturalism."12 Nevertheless, his dissolution has one feature in common with a logical positivist approach: he has argued, in effect, that it is irrational or inappropriate to feel any sense of awe or mystery about the existence of something instead of nothing. Since he begins his article by claiming that lack of clarity about the use of the word "why" is responsible for confusion on a number of philosophical fronts, it appears that he regards the expressed feeling of awe in the face of this question, or the fact for which it demands an explanation, as some kind of confusion. It might be thought that anyone who agreed with Edwards that the question is without cognitive significance would also agree that any feelings of wonder that it provokes are misplaced or confused, but this is not the case. Wittgenstein is one apparent counterexample. He expressed wonder at the existence of the universe, but also believed that the verbal expression of this wonder was nonsense:
If I say "I wonder at the existence of the world" I am misusing language. Let me explain this: It has a perfectly good and clear sense to say that I wonder at something being the case, we all understand what it means to say that I wonder at the size of a dog which is bigger than anyone I have ever seen before or at any thing which, in the common sense of the word, is extraordinary. In every such case I wonder at something being the case which I could conceive not to be the case. I wonder at the size of this dog because I could conceive of a dog of another, namely the normal size, at which I would not wonder. To say "I wonder at such and such being the case" has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case when it's clouded. But that's not what I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the sky being blue or not blue. But then it's just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology.13
Although this argument appears to conclude that it is nonsense to wonder at the existence of the world, it must be balanced against the context in which he introduces his experience of wonder. Having distinguished between absolute and relative value, he claimed that a complete list of the facts about the world must fail to include any absolute ethical judgments.14 Ethics has a sort of supernatural meaning, and if we are tempted to use expressions such as "absolute good", we must be expressing something that lies outside the world. He concludes, then, that we can try to express the meaning of these expressions by locating particular experiences in which we confront something absolute, and one of these experiences is the feeling of wondering at the world.15 In using this example Wittgenstein preserves a certain kind of sense for the feeling, even though it is not the kind of sense that appears in factual statements. The "absolute" transcends the language of fact. In the manner of a philosophical mystic, he insists that he feels wonder, but argues that saying this in words is a kind of nonsense. This does not mean that the feeling itself is nonsensical, but it is a response to something (the existence of the world) which shows itself, and yet cannot be stated.
His position clearly derives from the Tractarian conception of meaning, according to which language may express only factual propositions which are either true or false, and cannot express the great significance that resides in ethics and religion, nor in the mystical sense of wonder. One potential problem with this is that it apparently denies that there can be any appropriate reason for feeling the way we do. It combines the assertion of wonder with the denial that there is any basis for it, since it is expressible only as a kind of nonsense, that one wonders at the truth of a tautology. This appears to entail a denial that it is never appropriate to feel something extraordinary or mystical about the existence of the world, even when the feeling actually occurs. On the other hand, for Wittgenstein the sense of wonder is clearly significant, indeed he suggests that it has a much greater significance than factual or scientific information. It lies beyond our expressive capacities, but it remains meaningful in a way that words cannot be.
The value of Wittgenstein's position in the "Lecture on Ethics" is that it helps to illuminate the special status of the fundamental question of metaphysics. Although he does not discuss the why question itself, it is consistent with his view that the act of asking it may draw us into that feeling of wonder in the face of the absolute nature of existence, which he claims is significant in the way that ethical and religious truths are significant. Indeed, he admits to having an inclination to use the phrase "how extraordinary that anything should exist",16 which is close to asking the question itself. Just as the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsensical in themselves, but may be used as a ladder which brings us to an appreciation of the mystical, so the fundamental question may bring us to wonder at the existence of the world, even while it remains a kind of verbal nonsense.
Nevertheless, as Wittgenstein later acknowledged, the Tractarian theory of meaning is ultimately inadequate as an account of what language can do, and in so far as his position relies upon this theory, it is also inadequate. If the question of why there is something instead of nothing is to inspire wonder, then it must have some kind of meaning, even if its only function is to draw attention to a feeling for something absolute that cannot be expressed as a fact. It is because we can understand the expressions that Wittgenstein uses that we are able to understand the feeling of wonder that he tries to describe. If there were nothing to understand at all, then he would not be able to use the example in the way that he does. We may therefore conclude that, far from proving that the fundamental question lacks meaning, the way that he uses this example illustrates the kind of meaning that it has, which is such as to evoke awe and wonder. Instead of being an argument against awe, Wittgenstein's position demonstrates that the feeling is intrinsically connected to the meaning of the question, or the expression of the extraordinary nature of existence.
One suggestion as to why the fundamental question evokes this feeling is that it indicates that there is a fact-transcendent meaning to the existence of the world. Wittgenstein claims that he cannot imagine the world failing to exist, or that this is somehow beyond the representational powers of language. Yet he feels wonder nonetheless, because he can sense that there is something that lies beyond language. Another possible explanation is that the fundamental question asks about something which we can represent as a matter of fact, although we cannot see how to explain it. We can see the problem, but we cannot find an "explanation space" within which it could be solved. The question appears to cite a contingency, the existence of something, and ask for an explanation for it, but normal explanations are apparently ruled out (this much can be conceded to Edwards). When this is comprehended, we begin to see the contingency of existence as an absolute brute fact, something we must simply accept without a normal explanatory procedure. This realization, this confrontation with an absolute contingency, may provoke a feeling of wonder or awe, for we are confronted with something immense and somehow "beyond" reason. It is appropriate to feel this way if we understand the question in this way. However, some philosophers have tried to explain the existence of the world by invoking a logical or metaphysical necessity. We must therefore ask whether, given this kind of response, a feeling of awe is rendered inappropriate, impossible or irrational.
2 Necessitarian Explanations
It is arguable that necessary truths require no explanation. It is also arguable that it is inappropriate to feel awe at that which requires no explanation. Therefore, if it were believed that the existence of something instead of nothing was a necessary truth, it could be argued that a feeling of awe in response to the fundamental question is misplaced or irrational. Alternatively, even if it were not a necessary truth, but nevertheless something "natural", then awe might be considered inappropriate. I will examine this latter claim, in the form in which Nozick advances it, in the next section. In this section, I shall examine necessitarian solutions to the fundamental question.
We may have an intuition, even before considering the position in detail, that the claim that "something exists" is necessarily true is misguided, if not certainly false. This is especially true if we already feel that the fundamental question is awesome or unfathomable, but even if we are not so impressed, it looks like a mistaken claim. Modern philosophers normally argue that the notion of necessity derives its significance from the notion of analyticity. That is, a necessary truth is one that is immediately true in virtue of its meaning or can be shown to be so using logic plus the appropriate definitions. But the existence of the something instead of nothing is not usually thought to be an analytical or a logical truth. For example, when Susan Haack makes the observation that the standard objectual semantics for classical logic entails that a theorem such as "($x)(Fx v ~Fx)" entails that something exists, she sees this as an embarrassment for the objectual interpretation of the quantifiers, rather than something that naturally conforms to intuition.17 Even when the notion of necessity is seen to derive from metaphysics rather than logic, as in the case of Saul Kripke's theory of essentialism, there is no strong intuition that this can lead us to a better understanding of the fundamental question.
The notion of necessity is not a simple one. Contemporary philosophers tend to analyse logical necessity as truth in "all possible worlds", a phrase which can be understood conceptually or realistically. That is, some think of possible worlds as being conceivable situations which do not exist except in the imaginations of those who think them up, while others treat possible worlds as real things. David Lewis is the most prominent defender of the view that possible worlds are real things, and he even goes as far as characterising a world as a maximal mereological sum of spatiotemporally related things.18 In other words, he believes that possible worlds are very large material objects of a certain kind, and the underlying reason for this is that he believes that this is what the actual world is. He argues that, since mereology does not permit 'empty sums', there can be no empty world. Thus with his conception of a world Lewis can claim that "there isn't any world where there's nothing at all. That makes it necessary that there is something.".19 It is worth noting that this conception of a possible world automatically answers the questions of whether God exists, and whether there are abstract objects. Neither can be included in a mereological sum of spatiotemporally related things, so neither is possible. Such a conception, it may be contended, settles far too much about ontology far too quickly. We do sometimes wish to consider possibilities which, on Lewis' theory, we must regard as impossible.
Lewis is not the only philosopher to argue that the empty world is impossible using the premises of a theory of possible worlds. David Armstrong, whose position is very different from that of Lewis, also contends that the situation where nothing exists is impossible, but for a different reason. He adopts a combinatorial theory of possibility which limits possible worlds to those constructed from given elements (actual individuals, properties and relations). Clearly the empty world is not so constructed, because it has no structure at all.20 Hence there is no empty world, and the proposition that something exists is a necessary truth. Both of the Davids seem to be committed to the idea that our understanding of the nature of possible worlds derives in some way from our understanding of the actual world. Lewis claims that possible worlds are just "different ways things could have been",21 so they must be significantly similar to the actual world, with variations. Armstrong claims that possible worlds are constructs from the elements that make up the actual world, and thus we understand them because we can apply the concepts we already use in comprehending actual-world truth. Does the Lewis-Armstrong position on the nonexistence of an empty world succeed in diminishing our feelings of awe at the existence of the world? We may allow that the arguments for their views have plausibility if we accept certain conceptions of possibility, but they do not establish the necessity of something instead of nothing. Their shared conclusion explains neither the fact that the world exists nor the wonderment we feel in the face of this fact. Hence they do not entail that awe is inappropriate, and nor do they effect any reduction in the strength of this feeling. It should be emphasised that Lewis and Armstrong have not supplied any reasons for thinking that the proposition "Nothing exists" is incoherent or inconsistent per se. If we accept one of their theories, then it is impossible, but in itself it is a consistent proposition. But their theories are just the elucidations of specific conceptions of possible worlds, and these conceptions may be challenged or rejected. Furthermore, it is easy to turn their modus ponens into a modus tollens: given that the theories of Lewis and Armstrong lead to the impossibility of the empty world, we can use this as a reason for believing these theories to be mistaken. All that we need, it seems, is a plausible alternative conception of possible worlds which makes the empty world accessible.
Thomas Baldwin has constructed a detailed formal argument to show that there is a possible world where nothing exists, and thus he makes use of a different conception of worlds.22 It is based upon the idea that it is always possible to "subtract" a concrete object from a given possible world and thus to find another possible world, accessible to the first, which has exactly one less object in it. He begins with the premises that a world with a finite number of concrete objects is possible, that each of these objects might not exist, and that their nonexistence does not entail the existence of anything else. He then shows that there is an iterative procedure for "subtracting" objects from worlds, and the end result, given a finite number of objects, is that there is a possible world where all concrete objects have been subtracted. This is the empty world. The subtraction argument, as Baldwin calls it,23 probably represents the most natural way of thinking about the possibility that nothing exists. It is the limit case of a series of worlds which contain fewer and fewer concrete objects, and it is accessible to us in that we can think of the limit case of such a series. If we must consider abstract objects as well as concrete objects, then the subtraction argument as it stands will not suffice. However, a similar argument may be constructed for this case, and it would work for at least an Aristotelian realist position on universals, since this position states that universals exist only when their concrete instantiations exist.
Clearly Baldwin's conception of possible worlds is different to that of Lewis and Armstrong. While he uses an "abstract conception"24 of a possibility, they treat possibilities as if they were substantial things. He claims that their theories invoke the existence of something as a background condition of there being a possibility at all, and hence they use of a line of thought which relies upon a substantialist analogy. Baldwin compares their conception of possible worlds to a situation in which, although each of us can get away without doing the washing up, someone has to do it. It is written into the rules, or into the background context, that the washing up will be done. In this situation, the last person left in the kitchen cannot leave the kitchen without washing up, and this is similar to the way that Lewis and Armstrong would block the subtraction argument. They would claim that we can get down to a world with exactly one concrete object, but if we remove it, we are no longer talking about a possible situation. Baldwin's response is that the comparison does more harm to their position than his. As he says, although it cannot be that the washing up is done unless someone does it (so there is no empty case), "…the abstract conception of a possibility does appear to permit a possibility which is not a possibility of, or for, anything - namely the possibility that there be nothing at all."25 In this case, since he is arguing that the existence of concrete objects is not analogous to the case of washing up, he must believe that the "abstract conception" of possibility has logical priority over the substantialist conceptions of Lewis and Armstrong.
If the question of whether the empty world is possible comes down to the question of whether we are able to think of a possibility which is not a possibility of or for anything, then it seems that the issue is decided. Of course we can think of this, it is extremely easy! As long as we think of existence as a contingent matter, we can subtract as many items as we like from the actual world without violating any conditions on possibility. It therefore seems that the Lewis-Armstrong position is untenable. Furthermore, even if it were tenable, it does not necessarily succeed in reducing or eliminating our sense of awe at something instead of nothing. At most, it shows that we can avoid the problem of thinking about the fundamental question, but only if we are already committed to the exclusion of a large number of entities, such as abstract objects, God, and anything else that fails to conform to physicalist rules, from our ontology. However, given that the fundamental question is put forward in a context where these rules do not necessarily apply, the answer cannot be based upon this general ontological position without critically prejudicing the issue.
Many traditional philosophers have defended the position that "something exists" is necessarily true without making use of a general theory of modality or possible worlds. Their claims are based upon the belief that at least one thing inhabits all possible worlds, namely the Supreme Being. If the Judeo-Christian God exists, then he could not have failed to exist, and thus there would necessarily be something rather than nothing. The Anselmian argument, according to which all that we need to grant is the mere possibility of a necessary being to conclude that this being is actual, is controversial, and as it involves a series of complex problems, I will not discuss its details here. There are other ways of arguing for the necessary existence of God, and one of them is a straightforward deduction which proceeds directly from a consideration of the fundamental question itself. This is Gottfried Leibniz's argument in part seven of The Principles of Nature and Grace,26 which may be paraphrased as follows:
1. Every fact has an explanation. (The Principle of Sufficient Reason)
2. The fact that there is something rather than nothing cannot be explained by the series of contingent things (that is, "bodies and their representations in souls"27).
3. Therefore, the explanation for the existence of "something" must lie outside the series of contingent things, in a being that exists necessarily.
To argue in this way effectively explains why there is "something", but the explanation is just that there is no alternative, because of the existence of a necessary being. The argument does not by itself construct an explanation for contingent beings, although it does direct us to the point from which Leibniz thought the explanation must proceed. The existence of God explains why there is something, but the creativity and benevolence of God explain why contingent things exist as well. God has selected the best of all possible worlds as the actual world, and this is due to His power and essential goodness. But this is a separate matter from the fundamental question of metaphysics, which receives a simple answer in the necessary existence of the deity.
In the face of this kind of answer, we must ask whether it is still appropriate to feel awe. If everything has been explained, both the fact of existence itself, and the fact of contingent existence, has it become irrational to gasp and to wonder? Well, in fact it is difficult to see how the invocation of a necessary being explains why there is something instead of nothing, except in a trivial fashion. Rather than providing a full-blooded explanation, Leibniz's argument can be seen as a clear statement of the alternatives: either the existence of the world of contingent things is inexplicable, or there is a necessary being, since trivially, this being explains its own existence. One can therefore deny the existence of God only on the condition that one fails to make sense of the contingent world as a whole. I shall examine both of these alternatives with respect to their capacity to induce attitudes of awe.
Leibniz depends upon the principle of sufficient reason in answering the fundamental question, and he allows a form of teleological explanation to account for contingent truths (although, given his theory of truth, it is arguable that even contingency is eliminable from his system). He introduces the question with an argument that the series of contingent beings will not be able to explain the existence of something rather than nothing, so he clearly presupposes that there is a series of contingent things. Some philosophers have concluded that there must be something wrong with Leibniz's argument, and that the fault lies in his first premise. For example, Noel Fleming has claimed that in this context, the principle of sufficient reason is "... both doubtful in itself and opaque in what it requires."28 We are familiar with explanations for contingent entities, whose existence depends upon other contingent entities, but it is difficult to understand even the possibility of the necessary existence of something. However, if Leibniz's argument is rejected on the grounds that he makes illegitimate use of the principle of sufficient reason, then we are left with the alternative that the existence of something rather than nothing is inexplicable. Fleming admits that this is the case, and concedes that "... what the argument shows is that it is inexplicable unless something is necessary."29 He does not suggest a way out of this situation, but claims only that the principle of sufficient reason is false, at least in this context.
It is arguable that this position is itself inexplicable unless it is combined with some kind of expression of awe. We cannot claim that the world's existence makes no sense at all, that it is an absurdity, and expect to be able to treat this with a casual attitude, as if we were saying something plain and obvious and of no real consequence. Even if it is true, the claim is outrageous and audacious, for it opposes our normal disposition to look for causes and explanations, and puts nothing in its place. On this hypothesis, there can be no hope for a clue as to why the world exists. It is just there, and we must accept that it is there without seeking for its depth, or for a satisfaction of the inevitable human desire to understand more completely. This position involves the acceptance of ultimate mystery, which is not the kind of mystery that might be resolved or rendered less mysterious in the light of some metaphysical postulate. It therefore necessitates a feeling of awe, for we are awed when we confront the absurdity of the world itself. It is a consistent position, but it is not an easy alternative to face, if we are willing to take it seriously. If we adopt this position, we must learn to live with the absurdity of existence, rather than merely taking it on board as a theory. William Barrett has made this clear in his discussion of Leibniz's argument:
But if we choose this alternative, we cannot do so in the style of the cavalier or superficial atheist who does not pause for a moment at the enormity he is accepting. For it is an enormity: we do not say elsewhere, of any particular fact, that there is no explanatory cause or reason, the fact just simply happens to be there; but in this case, confronted by the most enormous fact of all, the universe, we would be willing to say it just happens to be there. We need to have the intellectual imagination of Nietzsche to grasp how audacious and staggering is the hypothesis of atheism. For if we say the world is without a reason, then it becomes absurd, and the whole of existence, and we along with it, absurd. We have then to accept the absurdity of life, as some of the existentialists have spoken of it, and learn to live with that absurdity.30
If we accept atheism, then we must accept its awesome consequences, and try to live in the shadow of an ultimately inexplicable world. This is appropriate because it is a sincere recognition of what we have accepted, and a feeling of wonder in the face of the fundamental question is appropriate for the same reason. Furthermore, it is desirable to retain this feeling, and let it have its full expression, for if we do not, then we will become dishonest atheists. Nietzsche complained that no one in his time understood the fact that God is dead, for even when they believed it, they acted as if nothing had changed. Their atheism was dishonest. If God does not exist, then we ought to astonished that there is something rather than nothing, for this is a wondrous absurdity.
Consider now the other alternative, which is that Leibniz's argument works, and we must therefore accept the existence of God. Does this eliminate the possibility of awe, just because we have found a way to give an answer to the question, or does it introduce another reason for feeling that "something instead of nothing" is powerful and significant? I have already indicated that the explanation provided is a trivial one, in that the existence of a necessary being is somehow self-explanatory. It does not proceed by way of an explanatory theory, but by stating what would be required for the question to have an answer. It could therefore be argued that, since trivial explanations are not occasions for wonder, it is not appropriate to feel anything awesome or significant about the necessary existence of God. We might be in awe of the notion of deity itself, but this is a different matter. Leibniz characterizes God as a supremely good, supremely powerful free agent, which can be seen as awesome, but these features are not used in answering the fundamental question, and are irrelevant to the feelings we have about it.
I believe that this argument is fallacious. There are occasions when necessary truths can inspire feelings of great wonder, and we can be amazed by what we know to be in some sense "trivial". For example, students of mathematics have often been astonished by the truth of the formula "eip = -1", which relates very "significant" numbers in a single equation, yet it is a necessary truth, and could be seen as trivial. In the case of the existence of God, there are reasons to be amazed if we are sincere about its implications. It is arguable that we do not have an adequate notion of the deity, especially if the only source for the intelligibility of this notion is the fact that it provides a swift answer to the question of why something exists. Furthermore, if more substantial content is added to our conception of God, such as that which is added by a religious tradition, it becomes even more difficult to see how He can explain the existence of something rather than nothing, because His interest in human affairs makes Him appear more contingent than necessary.
The Judeo-Christian tradition has insisted on making the idea of God sacred and special, by insisting that He cannot be represented in images or idols. As such, it has enforced certain necessary limits on our understanding of divine existence. It is sinful to think that one has a complete understanding of God, because it is a form of pride. Thus even when we turn to religion as a means of grasping an answer to the fundamental question, we are informed that to "grasp" the deity is ultimately to make a mistake. We find ourselves confronting a mystery in any case. It is therefore appropriate and desirable to feel a sense of wonder at the fact that it is impossible for there to be no God. Appropriate because God lies beyond our complete comprehension, and desirable because it is a rejection of sin of pride.
In reply to these points, it might be suggested that Leibniz's argument may succeed in answering the fundamental question, but fail in demonstrating the existence of God. For his conclusion (as I paraphrased it) is just that the explanation for the existence of something must lie outside of the series of contingent things, in a being that exists necessarily. We might claim, and many philosophers have, that numbers and universals exist necessarily, in which case there is no need to rely upon a conception of God in providing an answer to the question. If these items are postulated, then we can answer the fundamental question without any of the fuss that theism and atheism involve, and without provoking any sense of wonder or amazement. For numbers in general are quite ordinary things, and universals are even more commonplace. Anyone who knows arithmetic, and comprehends that it has existential implications, has the capacity to understand why there is something instead of nothing. There must be something existent, if arithmetic is true.
I have two replies to this. Firstly, Leibniz himself would not have found this kind of answer acceptable, for it cannot be used to answer his second question, which is why the world is exactly the way it is.31 For him, the God hypothesis has explanatory virtues which arithmetic in itself does not, since it can supply a teleological explanation for the contingent world (i.e. it is selected by God). In the context of his argument, an explanation for contingency is an important aspect of the fundamental question. Secondly, even if we ignore this context, an attempt to answer the question by citing numbers and universals as necessarily existent things is philosophically inappropriate. Platonic realism should not be understood as an attempt to explain the existence of the world, and platonic 'reality', the realm that is inhabited by platonic Forms, should not to be seen as a realm of 'necessary beings', but rather as a realm of transcendent beings. The point of postulating this realm is to account for the fact that Forms are changeless, eternal, and non-physical, not to account for the fact that something exists. Indeed, in the case of the traditional argument for platonic realism, the One-over-Many argument, it is not difficult to conceive of the nonexistence of all Forms. This would be the case, it seems to me, if there were no 'manys' to explain through the postulation of a 'one', and it is not difficult to conceive of the nonexistence of all particulars.
As for the logical necessity of arithmetic, and the supposedly necessary existence of numbers, it is also inappropriate, and highly questionable, in the context of the fundamental question of metaphysics. Gottlob Frege's version of mathematical realism, if it is seen as a response to this question, has the same ridiculous flavor as the claim that the fact that "($x)(Fx v ~Fx)" is a theorem of classical predicate logic proves that something exists. In response, we can say that it simply does not prove this. If anything, it proves that something is wrong with the standard objectual interpretation of predicate calculus. Similarly, if the only evidence for the existence of numbers is truth of arithmetic, then we can reply that this is not adequate evidence. The substitutional interpretation of quantification, or the Meinongian interpretation of both quantification and arithmetic, will suffice to show that we can accept the truth of arithmetic without accepting the existence of numbers.32 Thus the logical necessity of arithmetic does not demonstrate that numbers necessarily exist.
I have argued that both of the alternatives presented by Leibniz's argument are appropriate occasions for a feeling of awe. But the context of this argument is the explanation of contingent beings, and this yields a dialectical situation of a specific kind. There is a necessitarian response to the fundamental question which involves denying contingency altogether, and reinterpreting the world accordingly. According to Spinoza's conception of the world, there are no contingent beings. The world as a whole is exhausted by one substance, whose existence is necessary and whose cause is itself.33 Spinoza claims that "Nothing in the universe is contingent..."34 and it is arguable that his conception of the world allows for no feeling of awe and no sense of oddness at the existence of something rather than nothing, since the latter alternative is automatically (and necessarily) disallowed. He tries to explain the appearance of contingency by allowing that God, the one substance, has modifications which may be identified with ordinary objects in the empirical world, but ultimately these things also derive their being and their nature from God: "Further, God is not only the cause of these modes, in so far as they simply exist (by Prop. XXIV, Coroll), but also in so far as they are considered as conditioned for operating in a particular manner (Prop. XXVI)."35
Continued..
Arthur Witherall
artwitherall@yahoo.com
This is a draft of a paper which will appear
shortly in the Journal of Philosophical Research.
Many philosophers have expressed a feeling of awe when they come to address what Martin Heidegger has called the fundamental question of metaphysics: "why is there something instead of nothing?".1 Some have attempted to answer the question, and in finding an answer, their feeling could be diminished, or otherwise transformed into a kind of religious awe. Others have dismissed the question as meaningless or at least unanswerable2 and hence feel nothing special when they address it. Ludwig Wittgenstein's response is a complex one, for he both rejects the verbal expression of awe as a piece of nonsense, but insists that the feeling itself has an absolute significance.3 He connects it with the nonsense of ethics, which he says "...is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting and would not for my life ridicule it".4
There are many possible answers to the question, ranging from attempts to dissolve it to rationalist explanations of the world as a whole. Their variety helps to illuminate the conditions under which a feeling of awe is appropriate. Much depends upon how the problem is interpreted, and what is thought to be at stake. For example, an anti-metaphysical positivist response would dissolve the question as meaningless, and hence implicitly suggest that any feeling of awe here is irrational and inappropriate. Heidegger, on the other hand, claims that philosophy itself is at stake:
To philosophize is to ask "Why are there essents rather than nothing?" Really to ask this question signifies: a daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our questioning to the very end. Where such an attempt occurs there is philosophy.5
It is not surprising, given this view, that he regards the question as deeply significant. Nevertheless, Heidegger does not propose an answer himself, and one is left with the impression that his feeling of depth or awe is caused partly by the fact that his own mind is stalemated.
The attitudes of Heidegger and the positivists may be contrasted with the work of those like Nicholas Rescher,6 Robert Nozick7 and John Leslie,8 who have constructed elaborate theories that actually answer the question straightforwardly. They do not leave the question in the realm of the mysterious and terrible, but make use of traditional explanatory mechanisms such as universal laws (Rescher), probabilities (Nozick) and teleology (Leslie). I will discuss their arguments in what follows, but my main concern is not the question of their success or failure in explaining the existence of the world. My focus is on the question of whether their explanations have succeeded in eliminating the awe that accompanies the fundamental question itself, or have themselves given expression to it in some other form.
In this paper I will argue that a feeling of awe at the existence of something rather than nothing is appropriate and desirable. By this I mean psychologically appropriate and desirable, given our normal understanding of the meaning of the "why" question. I shall not construct an answer to the question, nor even a complete taxonomy of answers, but this does not mean that I regard the question as being something completely beyond our comprehension. Even if it is impossible to supply an answer, the fact that we respond to it means that something, however odd or inexplicable, has been understood. As long as we feel something about this issue, there must be a serious problem of explanation or a profound mystery which exercises the mind. If the question arouses nothing at all, no awe, no anxiety, no bewilderment or surprise, then we must hold a kind of positivist position which claims that the question is a piece of nonsense, and thus denies that any feeling of wonder at the existence of the world is needed. I will argue that this position is inadequate.
The structure of my argument is defensive rather than constructive. It is prima facie plausible to hold that the fundamental question ought to inspire awe, given what it means, and given that many philosophers have expressed such a feeling. I believe that there are only two conditions under which the question might conceivably fail to be awesome to one who considers it seriously. Firstly, if someone were to believe that the question is meaningless, then feelings of wonder or awe would be inappropriate. This is relatively straightforward, but some discussion of Wittgenstein's position is necessary, for he appears to believe that wondering at the existence of the world is some kind of nonsense, even though he gives expression to it.
Secondly, if someone were to believe that no explanation is required for the existence of the world, then they might fail to have any feelings of significance about the "why" question. This position could be adopted if one believed that it was necessarily true that something exists. In response to this, I will argue that there are reasons to be perplexed or awed even if one holds that it is necessarily true that something exists. For example, the position of Baruch Spinoza, which denies that there are contingent truths, and appears to entail that no explanations are needed, nevertheless permits a (reinterpreted) sense of awe at the very fact of absolute determinism. In my final section, I will examine some modern responses to the question, with the aim of showing that any tenable answer to the question, including the necessitarian position, must deepen our sense of mystery and our sense of the significance of existence itself.
1 Sense and Nonsense
It is arguable that if the fundamental question has no meaning, then it can invoke no feelings. Thus one way of denying that a feeling of awe is appropriate is to deny that the question of why the world exists makes sense. Senseless questions should provoke no response, beyond an expression of incomprehension. The intelligibility of the fundamental question has been denied by some philosophers. Paul Edwards, for example, argues that there is a logical grammar to the word "why" which has been violated in this case, rendering the question meaningless.9 He claims that when we ask of anything x why it happened or why it is what it is, we presuppose that there are antecedent conditions other than x which can explain x. This is partly what is meant by using the word "why", and if there are no such conditions, then it loses its normal meaning. In the case of the question of why there is something rather than nothing, there can be no antecedent conditions of this kind, because they too must be included in the "something" which must be explained.10 Edwards thus concluded that the question has no cognitive meaning, since it violates the conditions under which a "why" question can make sense.
It can be replied that this conclusion is too strong. Any antecedent conditions that are used to explain why there is something are also brought into question, it is true, but this does not entail that the question itself is without meaning. There are several other possibilities: the question might be answered by an explanation which invokes conditions that are themselves self-explanatory, or conditions that are natural (in Nozick's sense11) and hence require no further explanation, or the question might have an abnormal answer, invoking an explanation that does not use standard antecedent conditions. All that Edwards has shown is that the fundamental question violates the normal conditions under which "why" questions can have answers. But a question that does not have a normal answer is not necessarily meaningless. Extraordinary puzzles and situations transcend the conditions that he cites, and may force us to think about explanation in different terms. So his claim that the fundamental "why" question is unintelligible is not justified by his argument. Furthermore, the claim is unlikely to be defensible without the imposition of implausible restrictions upon what counts as a legitimate explanation.
Edwards makes it clear that his rejection of this question is not based upon "...an empiricist meaning criterion or on any question-begging assumptions in favor of naturalism."12 Nevertheless, his dissolution has one feature in common with a logical positivist approach: he has argued, in effect, that it is irrational or inappropriate to feel any sense of awe or mystery about the existence of something instead of nothing. Since he begins his article by claiming that lack of clarity about the use of the word "why" is responsible for confusion on a number of philosophical fronts, it appears that he regards the expressed feeling of awe in the face of this question, or the fact for which it demands an explanation, as some kind of confusion. It might be thought that anyone who agreed with Edwards that the question is without cognitive significance would also agree that any feelings of wonder that it provokes are misplaced or confused, but this is not the case. Wittgenstein is one apparent counterexample. He expressed wonder at the existence of the universe, but also believed that the verbal expression of this wonder was nonsense:
If I say "I wonder at the existence of the world" I am misusing language. Let me explain this: It has a perfectly good and clear sense to say that I wonder at something being the case, we all understand what it means to say that I wonder at the size of a dog which is bigger than anyone I have ever seen before or at any thing which, in the common sense of the word, is extraordinary. In every such case I wonder at something being the case which I could conceive not to be the case. I wonder at the size of this dog because I could conceive of a dog of another, namely the normal size, at which I would not wonder. To say "I wonder at such and such being the case" has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case when it's clouded. But that's not what I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the sky being blue or not blue. But then it's just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology.13
Although this argument appears to conclude that it is nonsense to wonder at the existence of the world, it must be balanced against the context in which he introduces his experience of wonder. Having distinguished between absolute and relative value, he claimed that a complete list of the facts about the world must fail to include any absolute ethical judgments.14 Ethics has a sort of supernatural meaning, and if we are tempted to use expressions such as "absolute good", we must be expressing something that lies outside the world. He concludes, then, that we can try to express the meaning of these expressions by locating particular experiences in which we confront something absolute, and one of these experiences is the feeling of wondering at the world.15 In using this example Wittgenstein preserves a certain kind of sense for the feeling, even though it is not the kind of sense that appears in factual statements. The "absolute" transcends the language of fact. In the manner of a philosophical mystic, he insists that he feels wonder, but argues that saying this in words is a kind of nonsense. This does not mean that the feeling itself is nonsensical, but it is a response to something (the existence of the world) which shows itself, and yet cannot be stated.
His position clearly derives from the Tractarian conception of meaning, according to which language may express only factual propositions which are either true or false, and cannot express the great significance that resides in ethics and religion, nor in the mystical sense of wonder. One potential problem with this is that it apparently denies that there can be any appropriate reason for feeling the way we do. It combines the assertion of wonder with the denial that there is any basis for it, since it is expressible only as a kind of nonsense, that one wonders at the truth of a tautology. This appears to entail a denial that it is never appropriate to feel something extraordinary or mystical about the existence of the world, even when the feeling actually occurs. On the other hand, for Wittgenstein the sense of wonder is clearly significant, indeed he suggests that it has a much greater significance than factual or scientific information. It lies beyond our expressive capacities, but it remains meaningful in a way that words cannot be.
The value of Wittgenstein's position in the "Lecture on Ethics" is that it helps to illuminate the special status of the fundamental question of metaphysics. Although he does not discuss the why question itself, it is consistent with his view that the act of asking it may draw us into that feeling of wonder in the face of the absolute nature of existence, which he claims is significant in the way that ethical and religious truths are significant. Indeed, he admits to having an inclination to use the phrase "how extraordinary that anything should exist",16 which is close to asking the question itself. Just as the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsensical in themselves, but may be used as a ladder which brings us to an appreciation of the mystical, so the fundamental question may bring us to wonder at the existence of the world, even while it remains a kind of verbal nonsense.
Nevertheless, as Wittgenstein later acknowledged, the Tractarian theory of meaning is ultimately inadequate as an account of what language can do, and in so far as his position relies upon this theory, it is also inadequate. If the question of why there is something instead of nothing is to inspire wonder, then it must have some kind of meaning, even if its only function is to draw attention to a feeling for something absolute that cannot be expressed as a fact. It is because we can understand the expressions that Wittgenstein uses that we are able to understand the feeling of wonder that he tries to describe. If there were nothing to understand at all, then he would not be able to use the example in the way that he does. We may therefore conclude that, far from proving that the fundamental question lacks meaning, the way that he uses this example illustrates the kind of meaning that it has, which is such as to evoke awe and wonder. Instead of being an argument against awe, Wittgenstein's position demonstrates that the feeling is intrinsically connected to the meaning of the question, or the expression of the extraordinary nature of existence.
One suggestion as to why the fundamental question evokes this feeling is that it indicates that there is a fact-transcendent meaning to the existence of the world. Wittgenstein claims that he cannot imagine the world failing to exist, or that this is somehow beyond the representational powers of language. Yet he feels wonder nonetheless, because he can sense that there is something that lies beyond language. Another possible explanation is that the fundamental question asks about something which we can represent as a matter of fact, although we cannot see how to explain it. We can see the problem, but we cannot find an "explanation space" within which it could be solved. The question appears to cite a contingency, the existence of something, and ask for an explanation for it, but normal explanations are apparently ruled out (this much can be conceded to Edwards). When this is comprehended, we begin to see the contingency of existence as an absolute brute fact, something we must simply accept without a normal explanatory procedure. This realization, this confrontation with an absolute contingency, may provoke a feeling of wonder or awe, for we are confronted with something immense and somehow "beyond" reason. It is appropriate to feel this way if we understand the question in this way. However, some philosophers have tried to explain the existence of the world by invoking a logical or metaphysical necessity. We must therefore ask whether, given this kind of response, a feeling of awe is rendered inappropriate, impossible or irrational.
2 Necessitarian Explanations
It is arguable that necessary truths require no explanation. It is also arguable that it is inappropriate to feel awe at that which requires no explanation. Therefore, if it were believed that the existence of something instead of nothing was a necessary truth, it could be argued that a feeling of awe in response to the fundamental question is misplaced or irrational. Alternatively, even if it were not a necessary truth, but nevertheless something "natural", then awe might be considered inappropriate. I will examine this latter claim, in the form in which Nozick advances it, in the next section. In this section, I shall examine necessitarian solutions to the fundamental question.
We may have an intuition, even before considering the position in detail, that the claim that "something exists" is necessarily true is misguided, if not certainly false. This is especially true if we already feel that the fundamental question is awesome or unfathomable, but even if we are not so impressed, it looks like a mistaken claim. Modern philosophers normally argue that the notion of necessity derives its significance from the notion of analyticity. That is, a necessary truth is one that is immediately true in virtue of its meaning or can be shown to be so using logic plus the appropriate definitions. But the existence of the something instead of nothing is not usually thought to be an analytical or a logical truth. For example, when Susan Haack makes the observation that the standard objectual semantics for classical logic entails that a theorem such as "($x)(Fx v ~Fx)" entails that something exists, she sees this as an embarrassment for the objectual interpretation of the quantifiers, rather than something that naturally conforms to intuition.17 Even when the notion of necessity is seen to derive from metaphysics rather than logic, as in the case of Saul Kripke's theory of essentialism, there is no strong intuition that this can lead us to a better understanding of the fundamental question.
The notion of necessity is not a simple one. Contemporary philosophers tend to analyse logical necessity as truth in "all possible worlds", a phrase which can be understood conceptually or realistically. That is, some think of possible worlds as being conceivable situations which do not exist except in the imaginations of those who think them up, while others treat possible worlds as real things. David Lewis is the most prominent defender of the view that possible worlds are real things, and he even goes as far as characterising a world as a maximal mereological sum of spatiotemporally related things.18 In other words, he believes that possible worlds are very large material objects of a certain kind, and the underlying reason for this is that he believes that this is what the actual world is. He argues that, since mereology does not permit 'empty sums', there can be no empty world. Thus with his conception of a world Lewis can claim that "there isn't any world where there's nothing at all. That makes it necessary that there is something.".19 It is worth noting that this conception of a possible world automatically answers the questions of whether God exists, and whether there are abstract objects. Neither can be included in a mereological sum of spatiotemporally related things, so neither is possible. Such a conception, it may be contended, settles far too much about ontology far too quickly. We do sometimes wish to consider possibilities which, on Lewis' theory, we must regard as impossible.
Lewis is not the only philosopher to argue that the empty world is impossible using the premises of a theory of possible worlds. David Armstrong, whose position is very different from that of Lewis, also contends that the situation where nothing exists is impossible, but for a different reason. He adopts a combinatorial theory of possibility which limits possible worlds to those constructed from given elements (actual individuals, properties and relations). Clearly the empty world is not so constructed, because it has no structure at all.20 Hence there is no empty world, and the proposition that something exists is a necessary truth. Both of the Davids seem to be committed to the idea that our understanding of the nature of possible worlds derives in some way from our understanding of the actual world. Lewis claims that possible worlds are just "different ways things could have been",21 so they must be significantly similar to the actual world, with variations. Armstrong claims that possible worlds are constructs from the elements that make up the actual world, and thus we understand them because we can apply the concepts we already use in comprehending actual-world truth. Does the Lewis-Armstrong position on the nonexistence of an empty world succeed in diminishing our feelings of awe at the existence of the world? We may allow that the arguments for their views have plausibility if we accept certain conceptions of possibility, but they do not establish the necessity of something instead of nothing. Their shared conclusion explains neither the fact that the world exists nor the wonderment we feel in the face of this fact. Hence they do not entail that awe is inappropriate, and nor do they effect any reduction in the strength of this feeling. It should be emphasised that Lewis and Armstrong have not supplied any reasons for thinking that the proposition "Nothing exists" is incoherent or inconsistent per se. If we accept one of their theories, then it is impossible, but in itself it is a consistent proposition. But their theories are just the elucidations of specific conceptions of possible worlds, and these conceptions may be challenged or rejected. Furthermore, it is easy to turn their modus ponens into a modus tollens: given that the theories of Lewis and Armstrong lead to the impossibility of the empty world, we can use this as a reason for believing these theories to be mistaken. All that we need, it seems, is a plausible alternative conception of possible worlds which makes the empty world accessible.
Thomas Baldwin has constructed a detailed formal argument to show that there is a possible world where nothing exists, and thus he makes use of a different conception of worlds.22 It is based upon the idea that it is always possible to "subtract" a concrete object from a given possible world and thus to find another possible world, accessible to the first, which has exactly one less object in it. He begins with the premises that a world with a finite number of concrete objects is possible, that each of these objects might not exist, and that their nonexistence does not entail the existence of anything else. He then shows that there is an iterative procedure for "subtracting" objects from worlds, and the end result, given a finite number of objects, is that there is a possible world where all concrete objects have been subtracted. This is the empty world. The subtraction argument, as Baldwin calls it,23 probably represents the most natural way of thinking about the possibility that nothing exists. It is the limit case of a series of worlds which contain fewer and fewer concrete objects, and it is accessible to us in that we can think of the limit case of such a series. If we must consider abstract objects as well as concrete objects, then the subtraction argument as it stands will not suffice. However, a similar argument may be constructed for this case, and it would work for at least an Aristotelian realist position on universals, since this position states that universals exist only when their concrete instantiations exist.
Clearly Baldwin's conception of possible worlds is different to that of Lewis and Armstrong. While he uses an "abstract conception"24 of a possibility, they treat possibilities as if they were substantial things. He claims that their theories invoke the existence of something as a background condition of there being a possibility at all, and hence they use of a line of thought which relies upon a substantialist analogy. Baldwin compares their conception of possible worlds to a situation in which, although each of us can get away without doing the washing up, someone has to do it. It is written into the rules, or into the background context, that the washing up will be done. In this situation, the last person left in the kitchen cannot leave the kitchen without washing up, and this is similar to the way that Lewis and Armstrong would block the subtraction argument. They would claim that we can get down to a world with exactly one concrete object, but if we remove it, we are no longer talking about a possible situation. Baldwin's response is that the comparison does more harm to their position than his. As he says, although it cannot be that the washing up is done unless someone does it (so there is no empty case), "…the abstract conception of a possibility does appear to permit a possibility which is not a possibility of, or for, anything - namely the possibility that there be nothing at all."25 In this case, since he is arguing that the existence of concrete objects is not analogous to the case of washing up, he must believe that the "abstract conception" of possibility has logical priority over the substantialist conceptions of Lewis and Armstrong.
If the question of whether the empty world is possible comes down to the question of whether we are able to think of a possibility which is not a possibility of or for anything, then it seems that the issue is decided. Of course we can think of this, it is extremely easy! As long as we think of existence as a contingent matter, we can subtract as many items as we like from the actual world without violating any conditions on possibility. It therefore seems that the Lewis-Armstrong position is untenable. Furthermore, even if it were tenable, it does not necessarily succeed in reducing or eliminating our sense of awe at something instead of nothing. At most, it shows that we can avoid the problem of thinking about the fundamental question, but only if we are already committed to the exclusion of a large number of entities, such as abstract objects, God, and anything else that fails to conform to physicalist rules, from our ontology. However, given that the fundamental question is put forward in a context where these rules do not necessarily apply, the answer cannot be based upon this general ontological position without critically prejudicing the issue.
Many traditional philosophers have defended the position that "something exists" is necessarily true without making use of a general theory of modality or possible worlds. Their claims are based upon the belief that at least one thing inhabits all possible worlds, namely the Supreme Being. If the Judeo-Christian God exists, then he could not have failed to exist, and thus there would necessarily be something rather than nothing. The Anselmian argument, according to which all that we need to grant is the mere possibility of a necessary being to conclude that this being is actual, is controversial, and as it involves a series of complex problems, I will not discuss its details here. There are other ways of arguing for the necessary existence of God, and one of them is a straightforward deduction which proceeds directly from a consideration of the fundamental question itself. This is Gottfried Leibniz's argument in part seven of The Principles of Nature and Grace,26 which may be paraphrased as follows:
1. Every fact has an explanation. (The Principle of Sufficient Reason)
2. The fact that there is something rather than nothing cannot be explained by the series of contingent things (that is, "bodies and their representations in souls"27).
3. Therefore, the explanation for the existence of "something" must lie outside the series of contingent things, in a being that exists necessarily.
To argue in this way effectively explains why there is "something", but the explanation is just that there is no alternative, because of the existence of a necessary being. The argument does not by itself construct an explanation for contingent beings, although it does direct us to the point from which Leibniz thought the explanation must proceed. The existence of God explains why there is something, but the creativity and benevolence of God explain why contingent things exist as well. God has selected the best of all possible worlds as the actual world, and this is due to His power and essential goodness. But this is a separate matter from the fundamental question of metaphysics, which receives a simple answer in the necessary existence of the deity.
In the face of this kind of answer, we must ask whether it is still appropriate to feel awe. If everything has been explained, both the fact of existence itself, and the fact of contingent existence, has it become irrational to gasp and to wonder? Well, in fact it is difficult to see how the invocation of a necessary being explains why there is something instead of nothing, except in a trivial fashion. Rather than providing a full-blooded explanation, Leibniz's argument can be seen as a clear statement of the alternatives: either the existence of the world of contingent things is inexplicable, or there is a necessary being, since trivially, this being explains its own existence. One can therefore deny the existence of God only on the condition that one fails to make sense of the contingent world as a whole. I shall examine both of these alternatives with respect to their capacity to induce attitudes of awe.
Leibniz depends upon the principle of sufficient reason in answering the fundamental question, and he allows a form of teleological explanation to account for contingent truths (although, given his theory of truth, it is arguable that even contingency is eliminable from his system). He introduces the question with an argument that the series of contingent beings will not be able to explain the existence of something rather than nothing, so he clearly presupposes that there is a series of contingent things. Some philosophers have concluded that there must be something wrong with Leibniz's argument, and that the fault lies in his first premise. For example, Noel Fleming has claimed that in this context, the principle of sufficient reason is "... both doubtful in itself and opaque in what it requires."28 We are familiar with explanations for contingent entities, whose existence depends upon other contingent entities, but it is difficult to understand even the possibility of the necessary existence of something. However, if Leibniz's argument is rejected on the grounds that he makes illegitimate use of the principle of sufficient reason, then we are left with the alternative that the existence of something rather than nothing is inexplicable. Fleming admits that this is the case, and concedes that "... what the argument shows is that it is inexplicable unless something is necessary."29 He does not suggest a way out of this situation, but claims only that the principle of sufficient reason is false, at least in this context.
It is arguable that this position is itself inexplicable unless it is combined with some kind of expression of awe. We cannot claim that the world's existence makes no sense at all, that it is an absurdity, and expect to be able to treat this with a casual attitude, as if we were saying something plain and obvious and of no real consequence. Even if it is true, the claim is outrageous and audacious, for it opposes our normal disposition to look for causes and explanations, and puts nothing in its place. On this hypothesis, there can be no hope for a clue as to why the world exists. It is just there, and we must accept that it is there without seeking for its depth, or for a satisfaction of the inevitable human desire to understand more completely. This position involves the acceptance of ultimate mystery, which is not the kind of mystery that might be resolved or rendered less mysterious in the light of some metaphysical postulate. It therefore necessitates a feeling of awe, for we are awed when we confront the absurdity of the world itself. It is a consistent position, but it is not an easy alternative to face, if we are willing to take it seriously. If we adopt this position, we must learn to live with the absurdity of existence, rather than merely taking it on board as a theory. William Barrett has made this clear in his discussion of Leibniz's argument:
But if we choose this alternative, we cannot do so in the style of the cavalier or superficial atheist who does not pause for a moment at the enormity he is accepting. For it is an enormity: we do not say elsewhere, of any particular fact, that there is no explanatory cause or reason, the fact just simply happens to be there; but in this case, confronted by the most enormous fact of all, the universe, we would be willing to say it just happens to be there. We need to have the intellectual imagination of Nietzsche to grasp how audacious and staggering is the hypothesis of atheism. For if we say the world is without a reason, then it becomes absurd, and the whole of existence, and we along with it, absurd. We have then to accept the absurdity of life, as some of the existentialists have spoken of it, and learn to live with that absurdity.30
If we accept atheism, then we must accept its awesome consequences, and try to live in the shadow of an ultimately inexplicable world. This is appropriate because it is a sincere recognition of what we have accepted, and a feeling of wonder in the face of the fundamental question is appropriate for the same reason. Furthermore, it is desirable to retain this feeling, and let it have its full expression, for if we do not, then we will become dishonest atheists. Nietzsche complained that no one in his time understood the fact that God is dead, for even when they believed it, they acted as if nothing had changed. Their atheism was dishonest. If God does not exist, then we ought to astonished that there is something rather than nothing, for this is a wondrous absurdity.
Consider now the other alternative, which is that Leibniz's argument works, and we must therefore accept the existence of God. Does this eliminate the possibility of awe, just because we have found a way to give an answer to the question, or does it introduce another reason for feeling that "something instead of nothing" is powerful and significant? I have already indicated that the explanation provided is a trivial one, in that the existence of a necessary being is somehow self-explanatory. It does not proceed by way of an explanatory theory, but by stating what would be required for the question to have an answer. It could therefore be argued that, since trivial explanations are not occasions for wonder, it is not appropriate to feel anything awesome or significant about the necessary existence of God. We might be in awe of the notion of deity itself, but this is a different matter. Leibniz characterizes God as a supremely good, supremely powerful free agent, which can be seen as awesome, but these features are not used in answering the fundamental question, and are irrelevant to the feelings we have about it.
I believe that this argument is fallacious. There are occasions when necessary truths can inspire feelings of great wonder, and we can be amazed by what we know to be in some sense "trivial". For example, students of mathematics have often been astonished by the truth of the formula "eip = -1", which relates very "significant" numbers in a single equation, yet it is a necessary truth, and could be seen as trivial. In the case of the existence of God, there are reasons to be amazed if we are sincere about its implications. It is arguable that we do not have an adequate notion of the deity, especially if the only source for the intelligibility of this notion is the fact that it provides a swift answer to the question of why something exists. Furthermore, if more substantial content is added to our conception of God, such as that which is added by a religious tradition, it becomes even more difficult to see how He can explain the existence of something rather than nothing, because His interest in human affairs makes Him appear more contingent than necessary.
The Judeo-Christian tradition has insisted on making the idea of God sacred and special, by insisting that He cannot be represented in images or idols. As such, it has enforced certain necessary limits on our understanding of divine existence. It is sinful to think that one has a complete understanding of God, because it is a form of pride. Thus even when we turn to religion as a means of grasping an answer to the fundamental question, we are informed that to "grasp" the deity is ultimately to make a mistake. We find ourselves confronting a mystery in any case. It is therefore appropriate and desirable to feel a sense of wonder at the fact that it is impossible for there to be no God. Appropriate because God lies beyond our complete comprehension, and desirable because it is a rejection of sin of pride.
In reply to these points, it might be suggested that Leibniz's argument may succeed in answering the fundamental question, but fail in demonstrating the existence of God. For his conclusion (as I paraphrased it) is just that the explanation for the existence of something must lie outside of the series of contingent things, in a being that exists necessarily. We might claim, and many philosophers have, that numbers and universals exist necessarily, in which case there is no need to rely upon a conception of God in providing an answer to the question. If these items are postulated, then we can answer the fundamental question without any of the fuss that theism and atheism involve, and without provoking any sense of wonder or amazement. For numbers in general are quite ordinary things, and universals are even more commonplace. Anyone who knows arithmetic, and comprehends that it has existential implications, has the capacity to understand why there is something instead of nothing. There must be something existent, if arithmetic is true.
I have two replies to this. Firstly, Leibniz himself would not have found this kind of answer acceptable, for it cannot be used to answer his second question, which is why the world is exactly the way it is.31 For him, the God hypothesis has explanatory virtues which arithmetic in itself does not, since it can supply a teleological explanation for the contingent world (i.e. it is selected by God). In the context of his argument, an explanation for contingency is an important aspect of the fundamental question. Secondly, even if we ignore this context, an attempt to answer the question by citing numbers and universals as necessarily existent things is philosophically inappropriate. Platonic realism should not be understood as an attempt to explain the existence of the world, and platonic 'reality', the realm that is inhabited by platonic Forms, should not to be seen as a realm of 'necessary beings', but rather as a realm of transcendent beings. The point of postulating this realm is to account for the fact that Forms are changeless, eternal, and non-physical, not to account for the fact that something exists. Indeed, in the case of the traditional argument for platonic realism, the One-over-Many argument, it is not difficult to conceive of the nonexistence of all Forms. This would be the case, it seems to me, if there were no 'manys' to explain through the postulation of a 'one', and it is not difficult to conceive of the nonexistence of all particulars.
As for the logical necessity of arithmetic, and the supposedly necessary existence of numbers, it is also inappropriate, and highly questionable, in the context of the fundamental question of metaphysics. Gottlob Frege's version of mathematical realism, if it is seen as a response to this question, has the same ridiculous flavor as the claim that the fact that "($x)(Fx v ~Fx)" is a theorem of classical predicate logic proves that something exists. In response, we can say that it simply does not prove this. If anything, it proves that something is wrong with the standard objectual interpretation of predicate calculus. Similarly, if the only evidence for the existence of numbers is truth of arithmetic, then we can reply that this is not adequate evidence. The substitutional interpretation of quantification, or the Meinongian interpretation of both quantification and arithmetic, will suffice to show that we can accept the truth of arithmetic without accepting the existence of numbers.32 Thus the logical necessity of arithmetic does not demonstrate that numbers necessarily exist.
I have argued that both of the alternatives presented by Leibniz's argument are appropriate occasions for a feeling of awe. But the context of this argument is the explanation of contingent beings, and this yields a dialectical situation of a specific kind. There is a necessitarian response to the fundamental question which involves denying contingency altogether, and reinterpreting the world accordingly. According to Spinoza's conception of the world, there are no contingent beings. The world as a whole is exhausted by one substance, whose existence is necessary and whose cause is itself.33 Spinoza claims that "Nothing in the universe is contingent..."34 and it is arguable that his conception of the world allows for no feeling of awe and no sense of oddness at the existence of something rather than nothing, since the latter alternative is automatically (and necessarily) disallowed. He tries to explain the appearance of contingency by allowing that God, the one substance, has modifications which may be identified with ordinary objects in the empirical world, but ultimately these things also derive their being and their nature from God: "Further, God is not only the cause of these modes, in so far as they simply exist (by Prop. XXIV, Coroll), but also in so far as they are considered as conditioned for operating in a particular manner (Prop. XXVI)."35
Continued..