Being before the Big Bang

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Chasw
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Being before the Big Bang

Post by Chasw »

Astrophyscist have in recent years begun to propose that the inception of the universe was a spontaneous event. Thereby, being came into existence, replacing nothingness. No Creator involved. My description of their position may be imperfect, but its close enough.

Savvy modern religionists, on the other hand, thank the physicists for their research and accept the idea of a big bang, but still see the hand of an agent, probably a sentient being, in causing the primary event and arranging for the results to be stable and eventually conducive to life.

From a metaphysical POV, both accounts imply or require a prior state of Being, before the big bang. If the inception of the universe was spontaneous, then it must have occurred when conditions were just right in a prior universe, perhaps the same universe, but at an earlier stage. Evidence for this possibility is the recent scientific confirmation of the Higgs Field, a kind of aether which exists everywhere, even where the initial photon-waves from the bang first propagated outward long ago. A wave can only propagate through an existing field.

What do you think existed before the big bang? Was Being the same then as now, or radically different? Did nothingness prevail before the bang? I suggest it helps if we maintain a rather fluid conception of time itself. Stephen Hawking once wrote that, with the advent of modern physics, "Philosophy is dead". The fact that astrophysicists are still stymied by this before-the-bang question, neatly refutes Dr Hawking's claim. Thx - CW
The central question of human existence is not why we are here, but rather why we behave the way we do - http://onhumanaffairs.blogspot.com/
Eduk
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Eduk »

Firstly the scientific concensous is that before the big bang is entirely unknown. And maybe unknowable but no one wants to rule that out. So science draws no conclusions from before the big bang. Of course scientist enjoy unknows and will do their best to find out what they can. So who knows maybe one day.
In the meantime science knows precisely nothing about events before the big bang.

Secondly the higgs field did not exist before the big bang, or at least no one knows if it did and there is no need for it to have existed before the big bang. It was created along with the big bang. Or at least that's the scientific consensus at this time.

I don't see how not knowing about before the big bang either refutes or confirms philosophy being dead or not
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Chasw
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Chasw »

Eduk wrote:Firstly the scientific concensous is that before the big bang is entirely unknown. And maybe unknowable but no one wants to rule that out. So science draws no conclusions from before the big bang. Of course scientist enjoy unknows and will do their best to find out what they can. So who knows maybe one day.
In the meantime science knows precisely nothing about events before the big bang.

Secondly the higgs field did not exist before the big bang, or at least no one knows if it did and there is no need for it to have existed before the big bang. It was created along with the big bang. Or at least that's the scientific consensus at this time.

I don't see how not knowing about before the big bang either refutes or confirms philosophy being dead or not
.


Eduk: A quick Google search of the question reveals there is not a consensus for or against our ultimate ability to know anything about events prior to the inception of the observable universe. What I did find is endless speculation about the causes of the inception, including several articles by Stephen Hawking. Although Hawking admits he is stumped, interest in the question by astrophysicists is definitely out there. At this point, philosophy has the upper hand. - CW

http://www.space.com/20710-stephen-hawk ... -bang.html

PS: FWIW, I once literally bumped into Dr Hawking in the faculty lounge at Cal Tech while I was attending a conference there in 1991. He uses Albert Einstein's old office there when visiting the campus. All I could say was hello, no dialog about cosmology, unfortunately.
The central question of human existence is not why we are here, but rather why we behave the way we do - http://onhumanaffairs.blogspot.com/
Eduk
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Eduk »

I said the consensus was that we don't know anything. I said whether it was knowable or not is also unknown. After all you can't prove a negative. But sure your average published theoretical physicist probably does like to think about this problem. Which is where they enter philosophy and where I guess hawking says a philosopher without the scientific background can't contribute. Also this much is clear, the universe does not need god. Or not need god.
Also for my money I get Hawking's point. But being a brilliant physicist does not make you a brilliant philosopher. I wouldn't take anything philosophical from Hawking's anymore or less seriously than anyone else.
However if I was a philosopher interested in the origin of the universe it would be difficult to justify simply ignore the science.
Camalot15
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Camalot15 »

Consciousness could have existed as contented logic before the big bang event happen into existence. There is a innate logic in the unfolding of the big bang event as if logic where its unchanging designer and mover. So the state of nothing that existed prior to the big bang could be describe as logic without action. If so the bang event has a logical conscious above light speed designer and mover.
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Erkle »

Even "logic without action" is something and not nothing.
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Camalot15 »

Yes logic with out action is certainty , absolute certainty that is. So we could describe the universe as a state of nothing or contented logic with an action event of something going on inside it. The uncertain something action event would have certainty as its logical guide.
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Chasw »

Erkle wrote:Even "logic without action" is something and not nothing.


Thanks, Erkle, well put. Ever since I stumbled across Being and Nothingness by JP Sartre, I've been fascinated by the concept of Nothingness, a separate ontological category which, if it ever existed, would be utterly without Being. All other Ontological categories are by definition parts of the state of Being. Even though Sartre's book is not about Ontology, questions about Nothingness have persisted for me. Recent advances in physics, however, have begun to convince me that Nothingness does not now, and probably never has existed within the Universe as we conceive it, nor within its immediate predecessor, whatever that was.

The remaining problem for students of Metaphysics, is the apparent fact that we humans know only the various states of Being. Its quite likely our species is truly incapable of observing, let alone creating, a state of Nothingness. If Nothingness is truly out there somewhere, its beyond our ken, something we can't even imagine outside of philosophy. In that respect, it remains a mystery. - CW
The central question of human existence is not why we are here, but rather why we behave the way we do - http://onhumanaffairs.blogspot.com/
Camalot15
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Camalot15 »

The fact is that the pre big bang nothingness can be observed as the logic that is innate in the universe action event. It both organises and controls the entire universe in the macro and the micro. It must be logic in action that collapses the wave function in quantum mechs.
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Renee »

Camalot15 wrote:Consciousness could have existed as contented logic before the big bang event happen into existence. There is a innate logic in the unfolding of the big bang event as if logic where its unchanging designer and mover. So the state of nothing that existed prior to the big bang could be describe as logic without action. If so the bang event has a logical conscious above light speed designer and mover.
There are a billion and one things that could have existed before the big bang. Anything that you can think of.

Except we don't know what they were.

That's where the buck stops. You can yammer on what you believe, and I could counter what I believe existed before the big bang, but anything you say has no more and no less probability than what anyone else says, including, but not limited to a billion and one different things.

If it turns your crank, sure, imagine what you want; but please be aware that your imagining has no basis and no foundation in the scientific realm. Science simply says, "don't know anything at all on the affairs of the known universe before the big bang."

I go one step even farther, and say that the religious may try to hijack the idea, and supplant a Being or Bing before the Bang, and that's just as likely to have been as a pile of cow pie in the same place, or a bamboo stick, or a billion and one other things (but not limited to a mere billion and one other things.)
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Felix
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Felix »

Was Being the same then as now, or radically different? Did nothingness prevail before the bang?
You question pertains to Existence, not to Being. Being can coincide with Nothingness but Existence cannot: there are states of existence, e.g., our material Universe, and then there is nonexistence, i.e., Nothingness, Being may coincide with both.

Sartre contended that existence precedes essence, but if existence is a mindless process without creative capacity, how can that be?
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Renee »

Felix wrote: Sartre contended that existence precedes essence, but if existence is a mindless process without creative capacity, how can that be?
Can I take a stab at the answer to that?

Because as a non-existent god is my witness, I know nothing about metaphysics and stuff.

So could existence precede essence by the same process as abiogenesis? In abiogenesis there was nothing but inorganic compounds, then molecules containing carbon atoms started to grow in size and complexity, until such a complexity was achieved, that self-replicating molecules formed. Similarly, there was a lot of existence, and existences became more and more complex spontaneously, until they reached a level of complexity that gave rise to essence.

In fact, Marx said (Karl Marx, not Groucho), that "quantitative changes always precede qualitative changes." It was one of his original own ideas, of which there were not too many, and it is pretty much on target.

I could have said the dumbest thing here, because perhaps "existence" and "essence" are not words used in the realm of natural language, but I take them as such.

Go ahead, laff at me if you want, you have my a priori approval to do so.
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Camalot15
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Camalot15 »

What it comes down to is that the universe is probably an expression of nonlocality which is what logic is. Logic is the difference between right and left spins across nolocality in action.. If nothing is the difference between right and left spins in action then nothing is the cause of right and left spins action and is the logic that preceded right and left spins in action. Nonlocality as logic in action there for organises the universe it created from nothing as an expressive local illusion to its self.
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Hbergson »

It doesn't seem possible to discuss what preceded something without understanding what that something is. The Big Bang is really nothing more than some scientific placeholder for some spontaneous miracle of sorts with absolutely no definition whatsoever. One might as well just ask what preceded God. In other words the Big Bang is the Atheist's God and lends nothing to our understanding of how it all started. The Daoists call it the Dao, which can be considered the Vital Intelligent Force. Lucas had his own version.
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Chasw
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Re: Being before the Big Bang

Post by Chasw »

Felix wrote:
Was Being the same then as now, or radically different? Did nothingness prevail before the bang?
You question pertains to Existence, not to Being. Being can coincide with Nothingness but Existence cannot: there are states of existence, e.g., our material Universe, and then there is nonexistence, i.e., Nothingness, Being may coincide with both.

Sartre contended that existence precedes essence, but if existence is a mindless process without creative capacity, how can that be?

Felix: In my lexicon, Existence is synonymous with Being. Classical philosophy did not use the term exist, which was introduced by Thomas Aquinas and others to expose the concept of Essence. In the present context, i.e. the question of what might have existed before the current universe began, Being is the opposite of Nothingness. This claim, of course, begs the question of what is Nothingness. Conceptually, Nothingness would be the total absence of space, time, matter, energy and electromagnetic fields. I've come to the conclusion Nothingness is for us only a concept, something we use in philosophical discourse to illuminate Being, and that Being is probably omnipresent and eternal. - CW
The central question of human existence is not why we are here, but rather why we behave the way we do - http://onhumanaffairs.blogspot.com/
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