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Lecture 2 - Why is there something rather than nothing?● Not an old-age question ● First asked by Leibniz in 1714: ○ “Why is there something rather than nothing?... Assuming that things must exist, it must be possible to give a reason why they should exist as they do and not otherwise” ● Leibniz’s A...

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Lecture 2 - Why is there something rather than nothing? ● ●

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Not an old-age question First asked by Leibniz in 1714: ○ “Why is there something rather than nothing?... Assuming that things must exist, it must be possible to give a reason why they should exist as they do and not otherwise” Leibniz’s Answer ○ Based on Aquinas’ argument from contingency (five ways) ○ Distinction between contingent and necessary beings: ■ Contingent being = something whose non-existence is possible and conceivable; something that may or may not exist; something whose existence is dependent on other things. Ex. life on Earth, yourself ■ Necessary being = something whose non-existence is impossible and inconceivable; something which may not fail to exist; something which does not need anything else to exist ○ According to Leibniz, all things in the world are contingent beings, but God alone is a necessary being ○ “This final reason for things is called God” Leibniz’s God ○ The creator and the ruler of the world ○ Necessary being = being whose non-existence is inconceivable ○ Bears the reason for its existence within itself Problem with Leibinz’s Answer ○ Why can't the world itself bear the reason for its existence within itself (be necessary)? ○ Sure, any given being in the world is contingent ○ But what if the collection of all these contingent beings (the world as a whole) is not itself contingent? ○ What if the world, although consisting only of contingent beings, is not itself contingent, but necessary? The World as a Necessary Being ○ Is the world as a whole is a necessary being, then one need not invoke God to explain why there is something rather than nothing; the world itself would be its own reason ○ Therefore, if the world as a whole is a necessary being, the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” becomes no more meaningful than the question “why are bachelors unmarried rather than married?” A Universe from Nothing ○ There is some physical evidence that the total energy of the universe is 0 ○ This means that the Universe is a king of nothing (the positive energy of matter is balanced evenly by the negative energy of gravity)

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Matter creates itself spontaneously out of nothing through a process of quantum vacuum fluctuations Questioning the Question ○ The question is why is there something rather than nothing has hidden philosophical presuppositions: ■ That is could have been nothing) in the sense that all existent things could have been absent, not that there could have been a thing called “nothing”) ■ That there must be some explanation for the existence of the world (Universe/being) ○ If any of these presumptions is false, then the question why is there something rather than nothing is rendered illegitimate or even meaningless Hidden Presupposition 1 ○ There could have been nothing ○ Could there have been nothing at all? Hidden Presupposition 2 ○ There must be an explanation for the existence of the world ○ What explanation could there be? What could count as an explanation? The Question is in Principle Unanswerable ○ To explain existence, one would have to refer to some existent thing which is outside existence and explains it, which is contradictory ○ To explain existence, one would have to go beyond existence, which is impossible ○ It is like asking “what is north of the North pole?” ○ So there cannot be an explanation in principle. The nature of the question itself makes it impossible in principle to formulate an answer to it ○ The question is in principle unanswerable, existence does not admit of an explanation in principle ○ Any answer will be a non-answer! So the question of why is there something rather than nothing is in principle unanswerable The question is a pseudo-question ○ Since the question is in principle unanswerable, in fact it is not a question. It is a pseudo-question ○ It is like asking “what is north of the north pole?” ○ Nothing could answer it, it is a bad question, it is misleading and it must be dismissed as meaningless and abandoned Yes but… ○ If you realize nothing could count as an explanation, yet you still feel the need of an explanation, then you don't need philosophy you need therapy ○ Ludwig Wittgenstein ■ Great philosophy why viewed it as therapy ■ Philosophical problems originate in misunderstanding the logic of our language ■ The aim of philosophy is to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle

Lecture 3 - Human Fragility and Antifragility ●

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Nakedness. Worry. Finitude. Fragility. ○ We are born naked. We don’t have fur to protect us from the cold, or from bad weather ○ We are finite things ○ We face limitations (cannot fly, death, doubt, worry, anxiety, need for food) ○ Physical limitations ■ We need food to survive ■ We need warth ○ Spatial limitations ■ We can’t be wherever we want to be ○ Temporal limitations ■ As soon as we are born, our clock is ticking, we are all going to die ○ We also face limitations of reason and emotion Thrownness ○ Thrownness is a concept introduced by German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) to describing humans’ individual existences as “being thrown” into the world ○ We did not choose to be born. Rather we find ourselves existing, Being-in-the-world ○ We do not come with an instruction manual, we have to find out the rules and improvise as we go ○ We know we are going to die (unlike animals) ○ For Heidegger, what characterizes us as human beings is Being-toward-death, and dread ○ A philosophy lecture on Heidegger was given in 1963 at Florida State ○ One of the students in that lecture was Jim Morrison. The concept of thrownness made an impression on him and used it in the song Riders on the storm Christopher Bollas: Mental Pain ○ Christopher Bollas is one of the most influential psychoanalysts today ○ He argues that the steps we take through childhood are marked by mentally painful episodes that constitute ordinary breakdowns in the self ○ Adolescence stands as the most painful period, during which some of the major disturbances of self arises, including anorexia, schizophrenia, bipolarity and sociopathy ○ Rather than approaching mental pain as a medical condition, Bollas examines it as a constitutive element of human psychic development ○ Along with the existentialist philosophers, Bollas regards mental pain not necessarily as a disease or illness, but as the fundamental condition of human beings ○ “Mental life is innately hazardous”

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Blaise Pascal ○ Heidegger was a 20th century existentialist philosopher ○ Existentialism was a philosophical current who emphasized the finitude and the fragility of human beings ○ Blaise Pascal was a modern philosopher, contemporary with Descartes ○ He is in some sense a precursor to existentialism ○ Mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Catholic theologian Finitude ○ Pascal anticipates several existentialist themes regarding human condition ○ Finitude - we are finite beings midway between Nothing and Infinite ○ “For in fact what is a man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, and All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything” Throwing Off Our Own Thrownness ○ For Heidegger the human being is not just being defined by being thrown into the world ○ We, through our capacity of understanding, are capable of action ○ For Heidegger, understanding always related to action, it reveals an ability or potentiality ○ Like Pascal, Heidegger thinks that through our ability for understanding, we can throw out own thrown condition, our own thronness ○ The human being can throw off its thrownness in a movement where it seizes hold of its possibilities, where it acts in a concrete situation ○ This movement is what Heidegger calls freedom ○ Freedom for Heidegger is not an abstract philosophical concept. It is the experience of the human being demonstrating its potential through acting in the world Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Antifragility ○ Concept introduced by Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a risk engineer and quantitative analyst, prof at NYU ○ Some things are fragile: they break under stress. Ex; a glass breaks when knocked over ○ However, “some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk and uncertainty ○ Yet in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile” ○ The concept of antifragility applies in biology: ■ Wolff’s Law: bones grow stronger due to external load ■ Immune system: gets trained by being exposed to various potential harmful stimuli Human Antifragility ○ Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt (prof of ethical leadership at NYA) has applied the concept of antifragility to human psychology

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Taleb “complex systems are weakened, even killed, when deprived of stressors” But humans are complex beings According to Haidt, human beings are antifragile: we are weakened by the absence of stressors and we gain from their presence “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”

Lecture 4 - Nihilism ●

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Collapse of the Old Image of the World ○ Man created by God, in his image ○ Earth is the centre of the universe ○ Man in the centre of Creation, special among animals ○ Man is made in God’s image: has reason, consciousness, free will ○ With the advent of modern science, the image of man being special has collapsed ○ Copernicus (1543): the earth is not even in the centre of the solar system ○ Darwin (1895): man is not created, but evolved from other life forms; we are related to apes ○ Freud (1900): man has unconscious drives; consciousness and reason are a veneer over the unconscious life which is dominated by drives: sex and death ○ Consequence: man is not special, there is no special place for man in the creation The Death of God ○ Nietzsche (1882): God is dead ○ “We have killed God - you and I. All of us are his murderers. God remains dead and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves the murderers of all murderers? ○ What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood of us? ○ What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? (The Gay Science, Section 125) Modernity and Nihilism ○ We have depended on God for millenia. God was the source of meaning and order in our lives and in our society ○ The modern era with its scientific reductionism has gotten rid of God - since God wasn’t necessary to explain Cosmos, he had to be let go ○ However, Nietzsche warns us that without God we are moving into an age of nihilism (nothing has value, or nothing matters; from the Latin “nihil”, meaning nothing) ○ “What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism.[...] ○ For some time now our whole European culture has been moving toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade:

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restlessly, violently, headlong, like a rover that wants to reach the end” (Nietzcshe. Will to Power, 1910) Nietzsche describes nihilism as “the repudiation of all values”, and the view that “the aim is lacking: ‘why?’ finds no answer” He is also famous for what's called perspectivism: “there are no facts, only interpretations”. Knowledge lacks a foundation If we have killed God, what is the source of values and meaning now? Meaninglessness becomes rampant and the world becomes absurd We find ourselves without God, without meaning, in a cold, absurd Universe, which is indifferent to our hopes and sorrows

Earth ○ In about 7.5 billion years, the hydrogen that fuels the thermonuclear fusion reactions in the sun will be exhausted ○ The sun will become brighter and it will evolve into a red giant that will eventually explode, annihilating the earth ○ Even if we colonize other planets, the universe will eventually grow colder and colder as it is expanding -> the “heat death” of the universe Theism ○ “If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed ○ Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution ○ There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? ○ It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose” W.L. Craig ○ According to theism, if there is no God, we have to face Nihilism Nihilism ○ We should distinguish between philosophical nihilism and psychological nihilism ○ Philosophical nihilism is a proposition about reality (nothing has value) ○ Psychological nihilism refers to a mental state (belief that nothing has value, depression, anxiety) ○ If philosophical nihilism is true: ■ Nothing has any meaning, value, or purpose. (ontological nihilism: no objects have the property of having value) ■ Nothing is good or bad (ethical nihilism) ■ All evaluative propositions (all value judgements) are false. (axiological nihilism, namely nihilism above value; axia = value in Greek) ■ We have no reasons to do, want, or feel anything (practical nihilism) ■ Nothing (including life) has meaning. Life (together with everything else) is without ultimate significance, value or purpose ■ Of course, philosophical nihilism, if believed, may lead to psychological nihilism Ecclesiastes ○ Everything is meaningless

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Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus ○ Sisyphus was condemned by the Gods to roll a large boulder up a hill only for it to roll down when it nears the top, repeating this action for eternity ○ Metaphor for human condition: meaningless, futile ○ Camus believes that the truth of nihilism affects us, but ultimately not in a bad way ○ Commenting on the absurdity of Sisyphus’ task, “we must imagine him happy” ○ “His rock is his thing… The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy” Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) ○ On the Sufferings of the World, 1850: ○ “The longer you live the more clearly you will feel that on the whole, life is a disappointment, nay, a cheat” ○ According to him, the reality of human suffering counts strongly against the idea that life has meaning Emil Cioran (1911 - 1995) ○ On the Heights of Despair (1934) ○ The trouble with being born (1973) ○ “Since nothing has substance, and life is a twirl in the void, it's beginning and its end are meaningless” Ciroan on Suicide ○ By what aberration has suicide, the only truly normal action, become the attribute of the flawed? Would Nihilism Be Something Bad? ○ What would be the consequences of nihilism for our lives/ ○ Is nihilism something to fear? ○ If we conclude that nihilism is true, should that drive us to despair or suicide Albert Camus ○ Existentialists like Camus agree that nihilism is true in the sense that life is meaningless ○ But paradoxically, they try to find meaning (and some kind of transcendence) in this very meaninglessness ○ Facing this paradox and being constantly aware of it is living with the absurd ○ For Camus, nihilism would have consequences. Rather than pushing you to commit suicide, facing the absurd allwos you to live life to the fullest ○ The absurd life is characterized by: ■ Revolt - we must not accept any anser or reconciliation in our struggle ■ Freedom - we are absolutely free to think and behave as we choose ■ Passion - we must live passionately, pursue a life of rich and diverse experiences ○ So according to Camus, the truth of nihilism would embolden us to live life with revolt, freedom and passion Does Nihilism Matter?

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Other philosophers seem to think that nihilism can’t possibly have bad consequences for your life ○ Ciran thought nihilism can’t motivate you to commit suicide ○ “It’s not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late” ○ “When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “what's the rush? You can kill ypurself at anytime so calm down suicide is a positive act” ○ “Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists who can no longer be optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why should they have any to die?” ○ “I am simply an accident, why take it so seriously?” Is Nihilism Something Bad? ○ Nihilism is the philosophical view that nothing matters; nothing has any significance ○ But if it is true, then this very fact wouldn’t matter ○ Nihilism is the view that nothing has value, that there’s nothing good or bad ○ But if that’s the case, then how could it be bad that there’s nothing that’s good or bad? ○ If nihilism is true, then anxiety about nihilism doesn’t make sense ○ For if nothing matters, how could it matter that nothing matters ○ Thomas Nagel has questioned the significance of the fact that nothing we do now will matter in a million years ○ “If that's true then by the same token, nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now. In particular, it does not matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter” Nagel, The Absurd In Incoherency of Nihilism ○ Come may say that because nothing matters we have reason to feel despair or to end our lives ○ We can perhaps say that if nothing matters then life is not worth living, that there is no reason to go on living ○ But it would also be true that life is not worth not living - there is no reason not to go on living ○ If nothing matters, this couldn’t make things bad or worse ○ Nietsche has recognized the inconsistency of the nihilist’s pathos: ■ “According to ‘nihilism’, our existence has no meaning: the pathos of ‘in vain’ is the nihilists’ pathos - at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.” ■ Nagel too: “Such dramatics, even if carried out in private, betray a failure to appreciate the cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn’t matter either Consequence of Belief in Nihilism ○ Kahane: “the truth of nihilism has no normative implications ○ It cannot make the world bad or worse, or give anyone reason to do or feel anything - or, for that matter, not to do or feel something

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It gives us no reason to feel despair, or to go on as before. Not even to be indifferent” ○ The truth of nihilism leaves things exactly as they are ○ However, if we come to believe that nihilism is true, then our belief in the truth of nihilism would result in our coming to lose our substantive evaluative belief ○ If we previously believed that something is valuable, and therefore cared about it, but have now come to believe that it’s utterly worthless, then normally the result is that we stop caring about that thing ○ The belief in the truth of nihilism would affect us: we would stop caring about the things we thought to be valuable. We would not go on as before What are we to do? ○ Either nihilism is true (case in which nothing matters) or nihilism is false (case in which at least some things matter = antinihilism) ○ We can believe that nihilism is true (believe that nothing matters), or in the falsity of nihilism (believe that some things matter) ○ We are better off if we believe antinihilism rather than nihilism, for (neither good or bad plus good) is preferable to (neither good nor bad plus bad) ○ We gain nothing if we believe nihilism even if it's true, we lose a lot if we believe nihilism and it's not true. We have pragmatic reason not to believe nihilism

Lecture 5 - Existentialism ●

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Western Hemisphere, 20th century ○ God is dead! He’s been dead for at least a century, since nietzsche proclaimed God’s dead in 1882 ○ God had to be let go like an underperfo...