Being before the Big Bang
- Chasw
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Being before the Big Bang
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
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
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
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
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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.
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
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.
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
- Chasw
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
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
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
- Renee
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
There are a billion and one things that could have existed before the big bang. Anything that you can think of.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.
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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Re: Being before the Big 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.Was Being the same then as now, or radically different? Did nothingness prevail before the bang?
Sartre contended that existence precedes essence, but if existence is a mindless process without creative capacity, how can that be?
- Renee
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
Can I take a stab at the answer to that?Felix wrote: Sartre contended that existence precedes essence, but if existence is a mindless process without creative capacity, how can that be?
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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Re: Being before the Big Bang
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
- Chasw
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Re: Being before the Big Bang
Felix wrote: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.Was Being the same then as now, or radically different? Did nothingness prevail before the bang?
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
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