Can something exist by itself?
I'll try to keep this short. Can something exist by itself?
You can perhaps think about this question in different ways. Can there be a universe, world, etc. in which only one thing exists? Can there be a universe, world, etc. composed of one thing? I think the general gist is clear though. Of course, take the question in whichever direction you'd like.
Upon thinking about this, my immediate response is to imagine a white sphere in a black void. However, this is clearly incorrect because there are many things present: (1) color, black and white, (2) geometry, which makes the sphere a sphere, and (3) space, in which the sphere is placed. You could argue there are other elements too, such as the fact that the sphere has the property of being white.
I'll skip some of my thinking for now, and jump to my conclusion: No, something cannot exist by itself. That is, there can not be some ensemble of existence, whether you call that a universe, world, or something else, in which there is only one thing. The reason for this is because in order for something to exist, it must be part of an interrelated whole, such that it can be differentiated from other things. Blackness can not be conceived of, nor even exist, if there is no other color. What is a sphere if no other shape can be imagined? The most fundamental example of this is truth and falsehood in formal logic. The only thing that makes truth "truth" is that it's not "false", and what makes false "false" is that it's not true. And that is to say that there is no inherent "truthiness" or "falseness".
I'm ignorant in philosophy, so I don't know what value there is to be found here, but I hope there's something worth discussing.
You can perhaps think about this question in different ways. Can there be a universe, world, etc. in which only one thing exists? Can there be a universe, world, etc. composed of one thing? I think the general gist is clear though. Of course, take the question in whichever direction you'd like.
Upon thinking about this, my immediate response is to imagine a white sphere in a black void. However, this is clearly incorrect because there are many things present: (1) color, black and white, (2) geometry, which makes the sphere a sphere, and (3) space, in which the sphere is placed. You could argue there are other elements too, such as the fact that the sphere has the property of being white.
I'll skip some of my thinking for now, and jump to my conclusion: No, something cannot exist by itself. That is, there can not be some ensemble of existence, whether you call that a universe, world, or something else, in which there is only one thing. The reason for this is because in order for something to exist, it must be part of an interrelated whole, such that it can be differentiated from other things. Blackness can not be conceived of, nor even exist, if there is no other color. What is a sphere if no other shape can be imagined? The most fundamental example of this is truth and falsehood in formal logic. The only thing that makes truth "truth" is that it's not "false", and what makes false "false" is that it's not true. And that is to say that there is no inherent "truthiness" or "falseness".
I'm ignorant in philosophy, so I don't know what value there is to be found here, but I hope there's something worth discussing.
Comments (63)
Maybe empty space but space has no meaning if it is void or empty. In a way an empty space doesn't exit.
There is always a background or logical space where we can have different states of affairs.
Your "many things" aren't things "in and of themselves." Those are properties of something. Properties are not separable from the thing with those properties.
The requirement of a second thing that experiences the truth of a world of one thing, at the same time contradicts it. World herein taken to mean a perfectly isolated physical system, hypothetical as they may be, which implies observations of it must be from within it.
There could be such a world, but questions about it could never be answered. Like....against the principle of cause and effect, if there is but one thing.....what caused it?
Interesting.
Wouldn’t the universe be the one thing that exists?
Yes, the Totality of what is real as a Whole would be the one and only permanent
thing. There could not be any spacers of impossible Nothingness within it. Einstein and Rovelli suggest that, as such, all is field.
My friend and I discussed it further:
This 'Eterne' or 'World' (as referred to in the old days) is the one necessary being (not Being).
No thing can lie outside of the World, for if any such thing were real, it would be included in the World. Thus, the world could not have been caused by anything outside of it. Nor could the World have caused itself, for that which does not exist cannot cause anything. Accordingly, the World had no beginning and will have no end; thus it is the Eterne, or what 'IS'. QED.
However, the World is in continuous transition. Indeed, the idea of causation comes from the fact that a small portion of the world seems from our perspective to change or move in constant conjunction with certain things that preceded it.
One may object that if the World is in continuous transition, it does not exist as anything in particular, not even for an instant, for logically there can be no instants where the progress of transitions is perfectly seamless temporally.
But what then is the basis for the conclusion that the World necessarily exists? Something must stitch together all the continuous transitions to account for the world as a unitary existent. The world must somehow remain the same even as it changes. But how is this possible?
The answer is that the World must have a kind of eternal essence that dictates the kinds of, albeit not the number of, its transitions. This limitation in kind is what we experience from our point of view as the laws of nature.
This condition of the World is, in a way, analogous to a topological space that is capable of an infinite number of forms that are however subject to the limitation that any form must be returnable to some original form.
It seems right that the Eterne/IS/World, having no possible point for input, can't be anything specific or particular, it then, presumably being Everything, either potentially, as in presentism, or somehow, all at once, in a superposition, as in eternalism or as in the quantum realm.
'Everything' sounds really Great; however, note that its total information content would be the same as the impossible Nothing, that is, zero. Welcome to the Library of Babel that contains all possible books.
You will be back, again and again, but you won't remember the previous.
Reality would be wholly rolling as the One Thing continuing/transitioning/transforming.
Only a fragment of his 'On Nature' survived, but it was the best part.
No one experiences my thoughts.
Think not that I am existent as ‘I’,
Or talk the talk and walk the walk of ‘I’,
For all’s of the IS; the Cosmos is I;
Where then, and what, who, and whence is this ‘I’?
Not the way you might think. The way I see it, potential interacts with potential as other, and in doing so continually manifests the energy event that IS the unfolding universe. The extent of initial awareness is simply ‘more’: something, and the universe acquires information about itself from there with every interaction.
As Rovelli says: “A physical system manifests itself only by interacting with another. The description of a physical system, then, is always given in relation to another physical system, one with which it interacts. A description of a system is, therefore, always a description of the information which a system has about another system.”
So the universe of energy events develops from an initial awareness of, connection and collaboration with this more in each of its one dimensional possibilities, incorporating what information it gains with each interaction. Many energy events such as photons cohere toward particles in this way, while the universe diversifies in all four physical dimensions, developing across space and time. Other energy events, by continuing to initiate awareness of, connection and collaboration with others, increase their capacity to distinguish between energy, force, direction, distance, duration: the laws of physics.
Chemical reactions develop a two dimensional awareness, with the capacity to distinguish between multiple interactions within a duration. Here begins the capacity for life...
If by ‘exist’ you mean exist in spacetime, then yes. But don’t forget that you are ‘something’, too. And you also exist and have the capacity to interact beyond spacetime - to experience ‘yourself’ in the universe, as potential - and manifest reality to the extent that you are aware of, connecting and collaborating with the potential of all that you experience.
I think that however you reduce particles only exist in relation to other particles. The whatever it is that is there is only there by that it exists in relation to whatever else there is that is there. I don't think that anything can exist by itself. An existents existence is in relation to other existents.
Edit: Existence is the relationship. Everything is energy. That atomic existents interact is how they exist.
Thanks
Bill
It can if the thing that exists is Everything. Sometimes we call it "the universe". Anything else that exists presumably exists within the universe, so can't be alone?
In that case, I think we substitute the label "multiverse" or "multiverses" for "universe", and the concept (of solitary existence) continues undisturbed, yes?
I’m the All and the One, omnipresent,
For I’m eternal and can neither be
Created nor destroyed, being my own cause
And the Ground of All—I am Energy.
the Ground of All... I like that.
Or the Ground of Determination (G.O.D.).
And yet the topic title clearly says "by itself". :chin:
The 'question' is meaningless, because it already existentially requires human observers verbalising their projected experiences in order for it to arise.
THINGS are THINGED by THINGERS.
I don't think so. Try this...
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1309/1309.0132.pdf
Quoting tim wood
I'm not sure. I think I see that Objective Reality exists. That's a starting point. If something has actual existence, it exists within OR. We have no Objective evidence of what exists in OR, or of how many things exist in OR. So, in those absolute terms, little or nothing is clear. :sad:
We can also turn the above on its head, and say that, because OR is everything that exists, nothing separate or distinct from OR can exist. But it still doesn't seem to lead to anything useful. :meh:
TW> Or is there one thing that in existing grounds the existence of all other things?
Yes: OR.
TW> And if one thing, does that exist by itself?
Yes, it's OR.
TW> And if it does, how would thee or me know it?
By metaphysical reasoning only, I suspect.
TW> Or does it require itself reciprocity?
I'm unsure how reciprocity is concerned here. Is there something - or some things - that can only exist if something else also exists? [ I exclude OR itself from this consideration, to avoid confusion. ] I suspect existence itself is not dependent on the existence of other things. But I have no justification to offer for this. :chin:
- OR is a thing. One thing.
- Nothing else except that one thing exists.
- There is no reason to subdivide OR, except human practicality. [ We can't swallow OR whole, so we need to divide it into digestible chunks, even though this division is artificial, or maybe non-existent (the division, that is). ]
Therefore there is, and can only ever be, one thing. Nothing is distinct. Thus the one and only thing that exists - OR - necessarily exists by itself. Is that the answer to this riddle? :chin:'Thinghood' is a word ascribed by humans to focal aspects of their common experiences and expectations of experience.
'Existence' is merely another word suggesting the utility of such 'thinghood'. Some 'existence' is disputed (like atheists disputing 'God') because the utility of the concept is disputed. Existence need not always imply 'physicality' as this is merely that aspect of potential experience which involves common sensory physiology of observers.
Words do not represent 'things' in the sense of 'stand for objects'...they RE-present 'things' in the sense of 'interaction events brought to attention of mind'.
NB Attempts to use 'logic' with respect to 'existence' is imo futile, because logic presupposes 'thinghood' as axiomatic.
NB 'Definitions' are a poor alternative to Wittgenstein's 'meaning is use'.
This is good, in that with no outside to Totality that could. have absolutes, all within would be relative.
Rovelli's latest book is where he has covariant quantum fields remaining as all that is.
Awesome analysis I must say (along with the other contributions)!
I'll add to the mix of things : Mathematical Realism v. Idealism.
The question is, does math exist by itself where it is discovered from time to time by us, or did we create it?
Thus:
"The question has engendered two positions: mathematical realism, which states that math exists whether we do or not, and that there is math out there we don’t know yet, and maybe never can. This position may require a degree of faith, since, “unlike all of the other sciences, math lacks an empirical component.” You can’t physically observe it happening. Anti-realists, on the other hand, argue that math is a language, a fiction, a “rigorous aesthetic” that allows us to model regularities in the universe that don’t objectively exist. This seems like the kind of relativism that tends to piss off scientists. But no one can refute either idea... yet. The video above, from PBS’s Idea Channel, asks us to consider the various dimensions of this fascinating and irresolvable question."
Math is very amenable to regularities.
I suppose math became of numbers of things and then went toward the relations of things. Early on, we may have had words for one, two, and a few, but then maybe '4' and more were invented so would say how many stones or sheep we had.
Yeah it's a so-called vexing problem being pretty much insoluble. There is a thread in the Philosophy of Mathematics forum here that is quite long, where you could find some more information.
In the end perhaps it's like evolution versus creation. Or once again if one were to choose not to dichotomize it it could be thought of as a little of both. Kind of like in the ground where we discover oil and then we make products out of it.
In any case I simply follow what theoretical physicist Paul Davies posits in his book The mind of God, which is I believe mathematics always existed out there in a platonic sense. Which I think would be another one of those synthetic a priori statements like 'every event must have a cause' LOL.
Except for the causeless bedrock that has to have random events.
Every object that exists is either complex or simple. That is, it is either made of simpler things (in which case it is complex) or it is made of nothing simpler than itself. Those exhaust the possibilities. Complex and simple - everything existent is one or the other.
Clearly not everything can be complex. For that would lead to an infinity of complex things and there cannot be an infinity of anything.
So, if there are some complex things, then there must be some simple things from which the complex things are constructed.
All extended things - so all objects that occupy space - are complex. For all objects possessing extension can be divided. Thus, no extended object is a simple object.
A simple thing, then, must lack extension. That is, it is must be something that does not occupy space (for if it occupied any space, it could be divided and that would demonstrate it to be complex).
The simple things - things that must exist if anything exists - therefore do not occupy any space.
Furthermore, simple things, by their very nature, exist. For a simple thing can neither be constructed - for there is nothing from which one can construct one, as they have no ingredients apart from themselves - not destroyed (for there is nothing into which one can deconstruct it). Thus simple things exist, and exist of necessity.
Complex things cannot exist absent simple things, but simple things can exist absent complex things.
So, can anything exist by itself - yes, a simple thing can.
Do such things exist - yes, demonstrably.
:grin: That 'I' does not 'exist by itself'. Its status is predicated on the 'existence of others' from whom it acquired the pronoun 'l', and the word 'existence', within the cognitive differentiation process (I called 'thinging' above) in which human languge segments 'the world' according to human needs.
As for the statement .... 'simple things by their very nature exist'....this must be the epitome of a vacuous tautology !
Things are thinged by thingers. The thing we call 'existence' is thinged, like any other concept, relative to our needs.
Do you deny that all objects that exist are either complex or simple? If so, what is this third kind of thing that is neither simple or complex?
If you accept that all things are either complex or simple (and you must, for they exhaust the possibilities), then do you think that there can be an infinity of complex things? Or, to put it another way, do you believe that an object can have an actual infinity of ingredients?
if you agree that no object can have infinite ingredients, then you must agree, on pain of stupidity, of if anything exists, some simple things exist.
And if you agree that some simple things exist, and understand that this means they cannot be created or destroyed, then you agree that some things can exist by themselves.
If you understand that level of analysis, then you will see that nothing can be separated from the observation process.
But you can't answer a question with a question, so kindly answer mine.
Its a vacuous qustion because 'simplicity' and 'complexity' are defined relative to human needs. The more sophisicated issue is whether what we call 'explanation' is 'top down' or 'bottom up'. The fact that we operate in our short everyday lives as though 'things' have 'objective existence' works from a pragmatic pov, most of the time, but has no philosophical import.
Tara indeed !...and give my regards to the old lady who claimed 'it's turtles all the way down' !
Sorry, but I find it difficult talking to someone who doesn't understand the circularities of their own 'naive realist' assumptions. So I leave you with my own 'tara' and Rovelli's point that 'things are merely repetitive observation events'.
Have fun!
Judging by your current 'pseudo-logical' activity on other threads, I'll take your absence of answer here as a 'no'.
Where you got the idea that you are an authority on 'proper argument' in philosophy is therefore a mystery, since philosophical debate relies very much on reference to its historical development (in this case, Kant, Heidegger, Bohr, Rorty, Rovelli et al) for its import. But to use your own phrase..'you wouldn't and couldn't know that'.
As for 'hot air' , I would suggest that anyone with over 180 posts in their first day of membership should have a good look at themselves in the mirror, and add 'Freudian Projection' to their neglected reading list.