QuestionsWhy is there something rather than nothing?Why anything? Why this? A question with no causal answer, but not without sense
Why is there something rather than nothing?The first mystery

Why anything? Why this? A question with no causal answer, but not without sense

Why is there anything at all; the Null Possibility; the cosmic selector

Derek Parfit 1942 · 2017Asks what really matters, and seeks to reconcile Kant, contract and consequences.
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What it claims

The question "why anything?" makes sense and might have an answer of a new kind (a non-causal "selector"), but it remains open.

Why

Nothing would be the simplest and least arbitrary possibility, and yet it is not what exists: that calls for an explanation.

The same idea through history
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz1714Leibniz asks the question ("why is there something rather than nothing?") and notes that nothing would be simpler and easier than something. Parfit takes up this point.
Derek Parfit1998Parfit sorts the "cosmic possibilities" (nothing, everything, the best, the simplest...) and asks whether one of them could be real because of a special feature.
In short

"Why anything? Why this? A question with no causal answer, but not without sense" is an argument by Derek Parfit (Parfit, "Why Anything? Why This?", London Review of Books, 1998, 1998) on the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" (answer: the first mystery). Its claim: The question "why anything?" makes sense and might have an answer of a new kind (a non-causal "selector"), but it remains open. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Parfit, "Why Anything? Why This?", London Review of Books, 1998
Valid with an implicit premise

Parfit rejects two ready-made answers: "science will eventually explain it" and "the question makes no sense". He imagines all the ways reality might have been: nothing at all, everything possible, the best world, a single world... Nothing would be the simplest of these possibilities, and yet it is not the one that is real. Perhaps one of these possibilities is real precisely because of a special feature, as if something "selected" it. Parfit does not say this is true: he says the question remains open and deserves our attention.

P1The question "why is there a universe rather than nothing?" makes sense, even without a causal answer: a cause cannot explain why the whole of what exists exists.
P2Among all cosmic possibilities, nothing would be the simplest and least arbitrary, the one needing the least explanation. Yet reality does not take that form: simplicity alone did not decide what exists.
P3If, among the possibilities, the one that is real has a very special feature (being the best, the fullest, the simplest...), this is probably no coincidence: it is real because it has that feature.
P4 · implicit premiseWe do not know whether the real possibility has such a feature, nor which: the hypothesis is not established.
Therefore the question "why anything?" makes sense and might have an answer of a new kind (a non-causal "selector"), but it remains open.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, one might too quickly conclude that a selector exists. With P4, we stay with: the question is legitimate and a non-causal explanation is conceivable.
Valid with P4. P1 says the question makes sense, P2 that simplicity does not explain reality, P3 that a special feature might, P4 that nothing is established. The conclusion is deliberately modest: "meaningful but open". It does not say that a selector exists.
Analogy. A thousand straws: if the gaoler draws the only one that saves you, you do not just say "all results were equally likely". Parfit sees the existence of the universe as a result that also calls for an explanation, even if we do not know which.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Bertrand Russell 1948 · attacks the conclusion

In his radio debate with Father Copleston (BBC, 1948), Russell refuses to ask the question about the universe as a whole: we explain things inside the universe, but the whole need not be explained. The universe is just there, a brute fact, and looking for its "reason" misuses the idea of explanation.

Parfit replies
see the argument
Derek Parfit 1998
Parfit describes this attitude: since these questions have no causal answer, some conclude that they have no answer at all, or make no sense. He thinks this is a mistake: even without an answer, they make sense and are worth asking.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Deep disagreement: does the whole of what exists need a reason? Russell says no, Parfit says the question makes sense, without promising an answer. Neither can prove it (our summary).
Henri Bergson 1907 · attacks premise 2

Bergson argues that the idea of "nothing" is a pseudo-idea: when we think we conceive absolute nothingness, we actually think of the disappearance of something or the emptiness of a certain content. If the idea of nothing is empty, talking about the "Null Possibility" and its simplicity makes no sense, and the question loses its starting point (Creative Evolution, 1907, ch. IV).

no reply
see the argument
Parfit never answered this objection.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point. Parfit suggests imagining that no living being, star or atom had ever existed, and thinks this makes sense; Bergson would say this image still presupposes something. We found no reply by Parfit to Bergson (our summary).
A
Adolf Grünbaum 2004 · attacks premise 2

Grünbaum argues that nothing shows that the absence of everything is the "natural" or most probable state of things, such that existence would need a special explanation. Without reason to think nothing is the norm, there is no reason to be surprised that something exists ("The Poverty of Theistic Cosmology", 2004).

no reply
Parfit never answered this objection.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Parfit himself does not say nothing is the most probable: he says it would be the simplest. It remains to be seen whether simplicity makes it a norm from which existence is a departure. Open point (our summary).