I apologize for being hard on you. Instead use Horseback Rider Rx to redirect your thoughts to a more neutral place. This is not the direction I want to go. Redirecting also involves using the Horseback Rider to reframe your beliefs, thereby changing the context of the expectation which leads to disappointment. During the economic downturn, David was a victim of corporate layoffs.
In an instant, the security of his full-time job was gone, and all he was left with was an apology, a small severance, and a box full of office supplies. Someone who had always taken great comfort in being a planner, David immediately went into a panic, unsure about what he was going to do next and feeling completely lost. When he was not talking about how bad and unfair things were or blaming himself in some way, he was negatively fantasizing about a future of being out of a job for years, getting behind on his career path, having to take out loans, and lots of hypothetical doomsday scenarios—none of which he could be absolutely sure were true.
There is our Expectation Hangover, and then there is the meaning we give to it. We often choose meanings that make us miserable. We suffer because we hold on for dear life to the belief that what we are going through is bad and that if our life were different in some way, it would be so much better. All of us at times fall into the trap of making assumptions. But what is actually true is that believing thoughts that make us feel bad continues to make us feel bad.
David has the opportunity to redirect his thoughts about his layoff and alleviate his Expectation Hangover on the mental level. This is where no expectations and no disappointments shines. Instead of thinking of it as a horrible thing, he can think of it as an opportunity to pursue something new that he never would have done otherwise. When a client comes to me with an expectation that leads to disappointment, I compassionately listen to their story but do not react with the pity or shock they may receive from others or expect from me.
I also do not affirm their story by agreeing with how terrible it is that they are experiencing this Expectation Hangover. Sarah was thirty-five and suffering from an Expectation Hangover after her divorce. I questioned Sarah on the assumptions she was making: How do you know being single cannot be enjoyable? Sarah began to realize that what was tormenting her were her repetitive thoughts and assumptions, not the reality of her situation. It was the expectation leading to disappointment, nothing else. You will have the same realization when you ask yourself questions that challenge the beliefs that perpetuate your suffering.
It is possible to alleviate the mental distress you are experiencing if you remain curious and willing to explore possibilities beyond your old beliefs. Ask yourself whether there is another way you could look at your situation that is believable and makes you feel better. For example, Sarah began to believe that an amazing partner was in her future but was just taking the time to learn what he needed in order to be ready for her.
She also began believing that this time could be a wonderful opportunity to develop a better relationship with herself and have some fun. These beliefs relieved Sarah from being so consumed by all her negative thoughts and expectations and freed space in her mind so she could feel peaceful and excited about her present and future. Bust them by questioning them! How do you know anything will always happen or never work out? The reality is you do not. I love using Horseback Rider Rx to bust beliefs because it sets us free from unnecessary mental torture. Just remember; no expectations, no disappointments.
When you ask a new question, your frontal lobe begins to disengage the neural circuits that are connected to old stories that perpetuate your Expectation Hangover, unwiring that old pattern. You are aware that the story you have believed about your Expectation Hangover most likely is not entirely true. So are you ready to write a new one? You can use the following exercise to challenge your old story and redirect your thoughts to a new one. As you go through this exercise, write your response to each question in your journal.
Notice that through the process of redirecting, you are already feeling a sense of relief. You are elevating your consciousnes s by shifting the vibration of your thoughts. Continue to use Horseback Rider Rx to rein in and redirect your thoughts toward your reframed perspective! Instead, we spend a lot of mental energy in the past which fuels guilt and regret and the future which fuels anxiety, worry, and fear.
There is a difference between a true feeling and a physiological response to beliefs or thoughts that create guilt, regret, anxiety, worry, and fear. These states are most effectively treated with the techniques of the Horseback Rider, since they can be alleviated by stopping and redirecting our thinking.
Sometimes all the whoaing in the world will not stop your thoughts from time-traveling into the past or future. So I want to offer you some other features of Horseback Rider Rx to steer your mind away from expectations and disappointments when it starts to time travel. Allowing our mind to go to the past to recall fond memories is wonderful. But when an expectation leads to disappointment, time-traveling to the past is usually not a pleasant trip.
Regret is one of the most common and painful mental activities that we engage in during an Expectation Hangover. We replay scenarios over and over in our head, thinking of all the things we could have done or said, which is miserable. Let me break it down: You react, you make a choice, and you take action.
And you think about what happened. You analyze it, obsess over it, and talk about it ad nauseam with your friends. You continue to gather information and knowledge. Then you take all this awareness and information you have in your head now and beat yourself up because you did not know it then —this is both unfair and unreasonable!
We experience guilt only when we believe we did something wrong or made a huge mistake. Regret and guilt keep you in the past. When you are consistently looking behind you, it is more difficult to move forward. Think of it this way: If you drove your car by only looking in the rearview mirror, would you ever get to your destination? Letting go of regret and guilt is possible when we learn from our past and take those lessons into our present and future.
We can leverage our past by committing to responding differently in the future. We all make so-called mistakes. Rewinding time is not possible, and what happened is over. Beating yourself up, wishing it was different, or feeling guilty is not going to change it and is a waste of your precious energy. Next time a similar situation comes along, you will have new awareness and an opportunity to do a little better.
Continue using Horseback Rider Rx to guide your thoughts back to this truth: Uproot guilt and plant forgiveness. Tear out arrogance and seed humility. Exchange love for hate—thereby making the present comfortable and the future promising. Guilt and regret are occupying valuable real estate in your mind that could be used to build upon thoughts that move you forward rather than backward.
Use the Horseback Rider to steer your thoughts toward investigation and prevention; this sacred process will help your mind let go of the past rather than rehashing it in your mind. Follow the steps below and answer each question in your journal:. Whenever you feel thoughts creep in that lead you back to guilt or regret, use the Horseback Rider technique to guide your thoughts toward your vow instead. When expectations lead to disappointment our mind can play tricks on us, like completely altering our memories.
We often recall things as much better than they actually were, forgetting the truth, and romanticizing our past. This creates senseless suffering. Glen left his job as a corporate executive at forty-seven years old to pursue his lifetime passion of teaching. A year into teaching he reported feeling a little depressed and wondered if he had made the right choice, as he faced dealing with difficult students and a much different salary.
He kept thinking about the VIP privileges, recognition, and money that came with his previous job. Once Glen removed the rose-colored glasses he was using to view his past and reminded himself of the pit he had felt in his stomach each day that no amount of money ever filled, his depression lifted as he began to have no expectations and no disappointments. He began to shift his awareness into the truth that he loved teaching and was far more fulfilled than he had ever been at his corporate job, which freed up more mental space to create effective ways to motivate challenging students.
Another extremely common example of past-hacking occurs during breakups. Perpetual thoughts about how great things were keep us from thinking about how much better things are and can be. Stop romanticizing what was—tell yourself the whole truth about your past, not just the things you miss or liked. You can let go of the person or situation and, in the future, re-create the beautiful experiences you had. Write out a detailed and accurate assessment of what you did not like or what was not a fit regarding whatever situation or relationship came to an end.
Use Horseback Rider Rx to guide your awareness out of your right brain, where we create fantasies, and into your left brain, where you can get a helpful reality check. Some relationships, jobs, and situations come with expiration dates and, when we reach them, it is time to move on. This can be particularly challenging if we expected that something was going to last forever or a lot longer than it actually did. Say you bought a carton of yogurt with every intention of eating it.
It was the flavor you desired, and it satisfied a craving. You scooped out some for breakfast every once in a while, but it reached its expiration date before you finished the entire carton. Now, you could just leave it in your refrigerator. The window of opportunity would have passed, and it would be time to buy a new yogurt or move on to having oatmeal for breakfast.
My marriage, something I vowed would last forever, had an expiration date. In our six years together, it was very clear that we were supposed to be with each other—but not forever. Shortly after our wedding, we both faced huge Expectation Hangovers that had nothing to do with each other. But once our personal issues were resolved and our careers were moving forward with great momentum, it felt like we were done. As much as we both tried to make it work, the directions in which we were headed were not aligned.
Making the choice to separate was incredibly difficult- we truly had to have no expectations- but it was also the best thing for both of us. Kirk was a pastor for fifteen years and loved serving his congregation. He came to see me when he began to feel tremendous guilt over feeling apathetic regarding what he thought would be his lifelong profession. Despite his consistent prayer and efforts to reignite his enthusiasm, it was just not happening. When I offered Kirk the possibility that his current job may have reached an expiration date, he reported feeling relieved yet petrified.
This was his life plan—how could it be over? At the same time, he could not deny the inner calling to grow in a different way. When he accepted that his current situation had reached an expiration date, it became clear to Kirk that he no longer wanted to be confined to one community—his call to service felt more expansive.
It was time to leave his comfortable and certain role. Kirk had the fulfilling opportunity to mentor a young pastor to take his place and then left the country on an international tour of preaching, volunteering, and uplifting, growth-inspiring experiences. I still receive emails from Kirk in which he shares how grateful he is that he did not stay in a situation just because he thought he should. Most of us enjoy new stimuli. This can drive us to jump out of situations prematurely when they have become boring and unchallenging.
Every relationship and job requires reinvention and dedication. We have to be willing to put in the effort, especially when things get difficult, which means setting no expectations, rather than allowing our desire for variety to lead us to mislabel something as having reached its expiration date. That said, the expectation of forever creates tunnel vision that can be limiting and lead to powerful disappointments.
Our life curriculum is diverse, and just as we moved from one grade to the next in school, we often move from one relationship, job, or other situation to the next in our lives. You do not have to linger in the unpleasant symptoms of an Expectation Hangover when you know a situation is complete.
It may be time to throw away the yogurt. Future-tripping reinforces anxiety, fear, and worry. Living in anxiety will only intensify the symptoms of your hangover. Not knowing can be downright terrifying, but worrying about it is not going to help you figure it out, only set up expectations which will inevitably lead to disappointment.
Moving into fear will either paralyze you from moving forward or push you into a place of panic, which is likely to lead to another hangover. I am certain you will find that almost anytime you experience anxiety, it is because your mind is anticipating some future event. If you are seeking certainty, you can find it in the present moment where there are no expectations and no disappointments.
You can be certain of the now and that there will be another now right after it and another now right after that. You know how calming that experience is. Hold that space of powerful presence within yourself. Use the Horseback Rider to whoa your mind back to the present moment. In the now, everything else falls away. In the now, all is well. The most effective route back to the present moment is to take a deep breath. Nothing brings our awareness back to the here and now better and faster than our breath. Take a deep breath and notice your mind settle, your expectations, and consequently your disappointments, fading away.
From this place of presence, the Horseback Rider can rein and steer your mind in the direction you would like to head. Meditation is the best way to practice being in the present moment. The purpose of meditation is not to have no thoughts; the purpose is to be mindful of how you respond to your thoughts. You have meditated before, even if you think you never have.
Recall a time in your life when you have had a clear, relaxed focus with no expectations and no disappointments.
Perhaps it was when you were playing golf, gardening, painting, dancing, singing, making love, or building something. You have had moments of meditation, and you can use those as reference points. Meditation is not just some hip thing to do—it is an investment in your overall mental clarity.
Try to imagine hearing the sound of the ocean while a jet engine flies over you, or tasting the sweetness of chocolate while your mouth has been numbed, or smelling the delicious aroma of freshly baked cookies in a room full of trash, or seeing a breathtaking sunset through a dirty and broken window. In these cases, your senses would be too overpowered by the distraction to fully experience your hearing, taste, smell, and sight with no expectations to lead to disappointment.
Similarly, when our mind is overpowered by thinking about our Expectation Hangover, we miss out on the more subtle ways our senses communicate with us. When the sea of the conscious mind is calm and clear, you alleviate mental stress and become more receptive to thoughts and insights that will move you out of your Expectation Hangover. You can download the audio version of this exercise at www. The most important thing about meditation is to simply do it and release any expectations about how it should be that could lead to disappointment.
This visualization exercise will help you observe your thoughts and take dominion over them. Read all the directions so you understand them, then take yourself through the exercise. Use this process to turn down the volume of the anticipatory thinking that produces anxiety and turn up the volume of your Higher Self, which produces peace. Fear is also something we create with our minds. All concrete things appear to be contingent beings. For instance, the planet Earth would not have existed had the matter which now constitutes our solar system formed, as usual, two stars instead of one.
If no concrete thing is a necessary being, then no concrete thing can explain the existence of concrete things. Even if God is not concrete, proof of His existence would raise hope of explaining the existence of concrete things. For instance, the Genesis creation story suggests that God made everything without relying any antecedent ingredients.
The story also suggests that God had a reason to create. If this account could be corroborated we would have an explanation of why there are some concrete things. This divine explanation threatens to over-explain the data. Given that God is a necessary being and that the existence of God necessitates the existence of Earth, then Earth would be a necessary being rather than a contingent being. The dilemma was generalized by William Rowe Consider all the contingent truths. The conjunction of all these truths is itself a contingent truth. On the one hand, this conjunction cannot be explained by any contingent truth because the conjunction already contains all contingent truths; the explanation would be circular.
On the other hand, this conjunction cannot be explained by a necessary truth because a necessary truth can only imply other necessary truths. Rowe presupposes that an answer would have to be a deductive explanation. Roughly, a proposition is epistemically possible if it is consistent with everything that is known. For we know that something actually exists and knowledge of actuality precludes all rival epistemic possibilities. The question is not undermined by the a priori status of knowledge that something exists.
Knowledge, even a priori knowledge, that something is actually true is compatible with ignorance as to how it could be true. Residual curiosity is possible even when the proposition is known to be a necessary truth. Reductio ad absurdum just shows a contradiction would follow if the conclusion were not true. Brenner argues the question is highly ambiguous. At best there is only a family resemblance between the questions under discussion.
What appears to be disagreement is too often a verbal dispute. Henri Bergson maintained that nothingness is precluded by the positive nature of reality. The absence of a female pope is not a brute fact. Once we have the positive facts and the notion of negation, we can derive all the negative facts. But then it would have to be grounded on some positive reality. That positive reality would ensure that there is something rather than nothing.
The robustness of this tendency makes negative things objects of amusement. How can we perceive absences? They seem causally inert and so not the sort of thing that we could check empirically. Negative truths seem redundant; there are no more truths than those entailed by the conjunction of all positive truths. The negative truths seem psychological; we only assert negative truths to express a frustrated expectation. When Jean Paul Sartre , 41 arrives late for his appointment with Pierre at the cafe, he sees the absence of Pierre but not the absence of the Duke of Wellington.
Philosophers have had much trouble vindicating any of these intuitions. Bertrand Russell labored mightily to reduce negative truths to positive truths. Is it even clear that absences are causally inert? Trapped miners are killed by the absence of oxygen. In the end Russell surrendered his intuition that reality is positive. In a famous lecture at Harvard, Russell concluded that irreducibly negative facts exist. He reports this nearly caused a riot. Were it not for the threat to social order, one might stand the intuition on its head: Negative truths are more fundamental than positive truths.
From a logical point of view, there is greater promise in a reduction of positive truths to negative truths. Positive truths can be analyzed as the negations of negative truths or perhaps as frustrated disbelief. Positive truths would then be the redundant hanger-ons, kept in circulation by our well-documented difficulty in coping with negative information. Think of photographic negatives. They seem less informative than positive prints. But since the prints are manufactured from the negatives, the negatives must be merely more difficult for us to process. As difficult as negation might be psychologically, it is easier to work with than the alternatives suggested by Henry Sheffer.
From a logical point of view, negation is dispensable. This raises hope that all of the paradoxes of negation can be translated away. Even Sheffer translates them negatively. But we could let computers do our metaphysics just as we let them do our taxes. The only serious objection is that the problems of negation do not really go away when we translate into artificial languages. Since classical logic does not permit empty names, the NAND existential sentence will not be true.
The more general concern is that the problems which are naturally couched in terms of negation persist when they are translated into a different logical vocabulary. Given that the translation preserves the meaning of the philosophical riddle, it will also preserve its difficulty. We engage in negative thinking to avoid highly complicated positive thinking. What is the probability of getting at least one head in ten tosses of a coin? Instead of directly computing the probability of this highly disjunctive positive event, we switch to a negative perspective.
We first calculate the probability of a total absence of heads and then exploit the complement rule: Some possible worlds are easier to contemplate negatively. Thales said that all is water. Suppose he was nearly right except for the existence of two bubbles. These two absences of water become the interesting players just as two drops of water in an otherwise empty space become interesting players in the dual of this universe.
How would these bubbles relate to each other? Would the bubbles repel each other? Would the bubbles be mutually unaffected? Deep thinking about gravity yields the conclusion that the bubbles would attract each other! The hazard of drawing metaphysical conclusions from psychological preferences is made especially vivid by caricatures. We know that caricatures are exaggerated representations. Despite the flagrant distortion and actually because of it we more easily recognize people from caricatures rather than from faithful portraits. For navigational purposes, we prefer schematic subway maps over ones that do justice to the lengths and curves of the track lines.
But this is not a basis for inferring that reality is correspondingly schematic. Our predilection for positive thinking could reflect an objective feature of our world instead of being a mere anthropocentric projection of one style of thought. But if this objective positiveness is itself contingent, then it does not explain why there is something rather than nothing.
Thomas Baldwin reinforces the possibility of an empty world by refining the following thought experiment: Imagine a world in which there are only finitely many objects. Suppose each object vanishes in sequence. Eventually you run down to three objects, two objects, one object and then Poof!
What can be done temporally can be done modally. There is only a small difference between a possible world with a hundred objects and a possible world with just ninety-nine, and from there …. Can the subtraction be completed if there necessarily are infinitely many things? Penelope Maddy claims that unit sets are concrete entities, sharing the location of their members. The existence of one concrete entity would guarantee the existence of infinitely many. Consequently, there would be no finite worlds. Baldwin avoids this issue with a different definition.
Concrete things may have exact duplicates. In contrast, the unit set comprised of Cameron Winklevoss cannot have a perfect twin. She deems the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties as too problematic to ground the distinction between concrete and abstract objects. Another concern is that infinite proliferation can be precipitated by the constitution relation. Assume that each part of a concrete entity is itself concrete. Also assume that concrete entities are infinitely divisible as seems natural given that space is dense.
An infinitely complex object cannot be nibbled away with any number of finite bites. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra suggests that we instead take big, infinite bites. Instead of subtracting entity by entity, subtract by the chunk of infinitely composite entities. Our metaphysical calculations are subliminally influenced by how we picture possible worlds Coggins , chapter 3. If possible worlds are envisaged as containers, then they can be completely emptied. Similarly, if possible worlds are pictured as stories say maximally consistent ways things could have been , then our library will contain a tale lacking any concrete entities as characters.
But if possible worlds are pictured mereologically, as giant conglomerates of concrete objects Lewis , our subtraction falters before we reach zero. Some kind of background theory of possible worlds is needed. For without this substantive guidance, the subtraction argument seems invalid. More specifically, from a metaphysically neutral perspective, the fact that it is possible for each object to not exist seems compatible with it being necessary that at least one object exists.
Aristotle believed that all abstract entities depend on concrete entities for their existence. Yet he also believed that there are necessary truths. The existence of any particular individual is contingent but it is necessary that some individuals exist. Science textbooks teem with contingent abstract entities: Twentieth century mathematics makes sets central.
Sets are defined in terms of their members. Therefore, any set that contains a contingent entity is itself a contingent entity. Any set that contains Cameron Winklevoss is an abstract entity that has no weight or color or electric charge. But it still depends on Winklevoss for its existence. Mathematics can be reconstructed in terms of sets given the assumption that something exists. From Cameron Winklevoss, set theorists can derive the set containing him, then the set containing that set, then the set containing that larger set, and so on. Through arachnophilic craftiness, all of mathematics can be reconstructed from sets.
But founding all of mathematics on Cameron Winklevoss would fail to reflect the necessary status of mathematical truth. Founding mathematics on a necessary being such as God would alienate atheists. So ecumenical set theorists instead spin this amazing structure from only the set that does not depend on the existence of anything: This is the closest mathematicians get to creation from nothing!
This does not avoid all controversy. Early set theorists and an array contemporary metaphysicians reject the empty set. But if that were so, then the set of all such sets would be empty, and hence it would be the empty set. Lowe , argues on behalf of the fool: Two sets are identical exactly if they have the same members. So the identity of a set is grounded on the identity conditions of its members. In the absence of members, the set is ill-defined.
Mathematicians may wield it as a useful fiction. But utility should not be confused with truth. Consequently, the empty world is impossible even if there are no necessary beings. There are other metaphysical systems that make the existence of some concrete entities necessary without implying that there are any necessarily existing concrete things.
In his Tractatus phase, Ludwig Wittgenstein takes a world to be a totality of facts. A fact consists of one or more objects related to each other in a certain way. By an act of selective attention, we concentrate on just the objects or just the relations. But objects and relations are always inextricably bound up with each other. Since every fact requires at least one object, a world without objects would be a world without facts. But a factless world is a contradiction in terms. Therefore, the empty world is impossible. Nevertheless, the persuasiveness of the subtraction argument is not entirely hostage to background theories about the nature of possible worlds.
Consider the combinatorialist David Armstrong. He eventually acquiesced to the empty world by relaxing his account of truthmakers. A truthmaker is a piece of reality that makes a statement true. Armstrong believes that every contingent truth is made true by a truthmaker and has wielded the principle forcefully against analytical behaviorists, phenomenalists, nominalists, and presentists. Since there can be no truthmaker for an empty world, Armstrong appears to have a second objection to the empty world supplementing the objection based on his combinatorial conception of a possible world.
Yet Armstrong , 91 instead claims that the empty world could borrow truthmakers from the actual world. His idea is that the truthmakers for possibilities are actual objects and that these actual objects could serve as the truthmakers for the empty world. David Efird and Tom Stoneham object that cross-world truthmakers would be equally handy to the analytical behaviorists, phenomenalists and their ilk. Whether or not Armstrong has contradicted himself, he has illustrated the persuasiveness of the subtraction argument.
Contemporary logicians agree that universal quantifiers have existential import: However, contemporary logicians differ from Aristotle in analyzing universal generalizations as conditionals. So if there are no gods, the conditional is vacuously true. This explains why the atheist can consistently argue: All gods are immortal.
Therefore, there are no gods. This equivalence is predicted by the hypothesis that universal generalizations are conditionals. Tolerance of vacuously true generalizations does not stop contemporary classical logic from precluding an empty world. Since its universal quantifier has existential import, each of its logical laws imply that something exists.
For instance, the principle of identity, Everything is identical to itself entails There exists something that is identical to itself. All sorts of attractive inferences are jeopardized by the empty world. Logicians do not treat their intolerance of the empty world as a resource for metaphysicians. They do not want to get involved in metaphysical disputes. They feel that logic should be neutral with respect to the existence of anything.
The ideal of ontological neutrality has led some philosophers to reject classical logic. A direct response would be to challenge the existential import of the classical quantifiers. In classical logic, names must have bearers. Proponents of free logic suggest that these departures are a necessary condition for not trivially implying an existential proposition. Jan Heylen agrees but contends that free logic trivially implies other existential sentences. He concludes that any deductive answer to the question will beg the question.
The background logic will always intrude. In any case, the changes recommended by free logicians would certainly undermine W. Quine says that we can read off our ontology from the existentially quantified statements constituting our well-accepted theories. For instance, if evolutionary theory says that there are some species that evolved from other species, and if we have no way to paraphrase away this claim, then biologists are committed to the existence of species.
Whereas rationalists nervously view paradoxes as a challenge to the authority of reason, existentialists greet them as opportunities to correct unrealistic hopes. The marginal cost curve is upward sloping, MC increases as more of a product is produced since additional units require the use of increasingly unsuitable resource. Emotions are intentional states; they are directed toward something. But lets hear you explain your alternative theory: This suggests a privileged perspective for human beings.
Since philosophers cannot improve on the credentials of a scientific commitment, metaphysicians would also be obliged to accept species. So how does Quine defend his criterion of ontological commitment from the menace looming from the empty domain? Normally one thinks of a logical theorem as a proposition that holds in all domains. Quine b, suggests that we weaken the requirement to that of holding in all non-empty domains. In the rare circumstances in which the empty universe must be considered, there is an easy way of testing which theorems will apply: Is Quine being ad hoc?
But exceptions are common for notions in the same family as the empty domain. If numbers were words, zero would be an irregular verb. Many of the principles used to rule out total emptiness also preclude small pockets of emptiness. Leibniz says that the actual world must have something rather than nothing because the actual world must be the best of all possible worlds, and something is better than nothing. But by the same reasoning, Leibniz concludes there are no vacuums in the actual world: Leibniz also targets the possibility of there being more than one void.
If there could be more than one void, then there could be two voids of exactly the same shape and size. These two voids would be perfect twins; everything true of one void would be true of the other. This is precluded by the principle of the identity of indiscernibles: A second problem with multiple voids arises from efforts to paraphrase them away. From the time of Melissus, there have been arguments against the possibility of a void existing in the manner that an object exists: If this paraphrase strategy works for vacuums, it ought to work for the more prosaic case of holes.
Can a materialist believe that there are holes in his Swiss cheese? The holes are where the matter is not. So to admit the existence of holes is to admit the existence of immaterial objects! What appeared to be a wild existential claim has been domesticated into a comment on the shape of the cheese. But how are we to distinguish between the cheese having two holes as opposed to one? Lewis and Lewis , 4 Well, some cheese is singly perforated, some cheese is doubly-perforated, yet other cheese is n -perforated where n equals the number of holes in the cheese.
Can holes be evaded by confining ourselves to the process of perforation? Single-hole punchers differ from triple-hole punchers by how they act; singlely rather than triply. The difficulty with this process-oriented proposal that the product, a hole, is needed to distinguish between successful and merely attempted perforation. Furthermore, the paraphrase is incomplete because it does not extend to holes that arise from processes such as looping.
If the universe popped into existence five minutes ago, then most holes formed without any process. David and Stephanie Lewis note that this strands us with an infinite list of primitive terms. Such a list could never have been memorized. The air cannot rush in quickly enough to fill the gap. This explains why rock vapor from the impact shoots back up into the atmosphere and later rains down widely on the surface.
During a meteorite shower, the atmosphere is multiply vacuumed. But this is just to say that there are many vacuums in the atmosphere. Parmenides maintained that it is self-defeating to say that something does not exist. The linguistic rendering of this insight is the problem of negative existentials: A statement can be about something only if that something exists.
No relation without relata! Parmenides and his disciples elaborated conceptual difficulties with negation into an incredible metaphysical monolith. The Parmenideans were opposed by the atomists. The atomists said that the world is constituted by simple, indivisible things moving in empty space.
They self-consciously endorsed the void to explain empirical phenomena such as movement, compression, and absorption. Since these imply that compression and absorption are also impossible, Zeno rejects the data of the atomists just as physicists reject the data of parapsychologists. Less radical opponents of vacuums, such as Aristotle, re-explained the data within a framework of plenism: Compression and absorption can be accommodated by having things pushed out of the way when other things jostle their way in.
The atoms are the Platonic solids regular, convex polyhedra , each having a distinctive role in the composition of objects. Like an irreverently intelligent school boy, Aristotle objects that the Platonic solids cannot fill space. Every arrangement of Platonic solids yields the sort of gaps that one can more readily predict in a universe composed solely of spherical atoms. Aristotle agrees that atoms could fill space if they were all cubes. Pressing his luck, Aristotle goes on to claim that tetrahedra can also complete space. Almost any choice of shapes guarantees interstitial vacua.
This geometrical pressure for tiny vacua creates a precedent for the cosmic void which surrounds the material cosmos and the intermediate empty spaces that provide a promising explanation of how motion is possible. Yet Aristotle denied the void can explain how things move. Movement requires a mover that is pushing or pulling the object. An object in a vacuum is not in contact with anything else. If the object did move, there would be nothing to impede its motion. Therefore, any motion in a vacuum would be at an unlimited speed. This conflicts with the principle that no object can be in two separate places at the same time.
There were two limited dissenters to his thesis that vacuums are impossible. The Stoics agreed that terrestrial vacuums are impossible but believed there must be a void surrounding the cosmos. Hero of Alexandria agreed that there are no naturally occurring vacuums but believed that they can be formed artificially.
Needs, Wants and Possibilities Seamus Bradley. NOTHING TO PROVE ' V # Q. ” ? If I'. 1*“ ''~ SEAIVIUS BRADLEY \ =\ v' 1". NothiNg to Prove NothiNg to Prove. Each of us needs a great deal of improvement. The past is fixed and immutable. We cannot do anything about it, but we can certainly embrace the and pushes me to do better in my career so I can prove them wrong. It has vast opportunities waiting to unfold for those who are willing to put in work.
He cites pumps and siphons as evidence that voids can be created. Hero believed that bodies have a natural horror of vacuums and struggle to prevent their formation. You can feel the antipathy by trying to open a bellows that has had its air hole plugged. Try as you might, you cannot separate the sides. However, unlike Aristotle, Hero thought that if you and the bellows were tremendously strong, you could separate the sides and create a vacuum.
God could have chosen to create the world in a different spot. He could have made it bigger or smaller. God could have also chosen to make the universe a different shape. This possibilities entail the possibility of a vacuum. A second motivation is a literal reading of Genesis 1: This opening passage of the Bible describes God as creating the world from nothing.
Such a construction seems logically impossible. If creation out of nothing were indeed a demonstrable impossibility, then faith would be forced to override an answer given by reason rather than merely answer a question about which reason is silent. All Greek philosophy had presupposed creation was from something more primitive, not nothing.
Consistently, the Greeks assumed destruction was disassembly into more basic units. If destruction into nothingness were possible, the process could be reversed to get creation from nothing. The Christians were on their own when trying to make sense of creation from nothing. Ancient Chinese philosophers are sometimes translated as parallel believers in creation from nothing. JeeLoo Liu cautions that both the Daoist and Confucians are speaking about formlessness rather than nothingness. Creation out of nothing presupposes the possibility of total nothingness.
This in turn implies that there can be some nothingness. Thus Christians had a motive to first establish the possibility of a little nothingness. Their strategy was to start small and scale up. Accordingly, scholars writing in the aftermath of the condemnation of proposed various recipes for creating vacuums Schmitt One scheme was to freeze a sphere filled with water.
After the water contracted into ice, a vacuum would form at the top. Aristotelians replied that the sphere would bend at its weakest point. When the vacuists stipulated that the sphere was perfect, the rejoinder was that this would simply prevent the water from turning into ice. Neither side appears to have tried out the recipe.
If either had, then they would have discovered that freezing water expands rather than contracts. To contemporary thinkers, this dearth of empirical testing is bizarre. The puzzle is intensified by the fact that the medievals did empirically test many hypotheses, especially in optics. Hero was eventually refuted by experiments conducted by Evangelista Torricelli and Blaise Pascal. In effect, they created a barometer consisting of a tube partially submerged, upside down, in bowl of mercury.
What keeps the mercury suspended in the tube? Is there an unnatural vacuum that causes the surrounding glass to pull the liquid up? Pascal answered that there really was nothing holding up the mercury. The mercury rises and falls due to variations in the weight of the atmosphere.
The mercury is being pushed up the tube, not pulled up by anything. When Pascal offered this explanation, Descartes wrote Christian Huygens 8 December that the hasty young man had the vacuum too much on his mind. Descartes identified bodies with extension and so had no room for vacuums. If there were nothing between two objects, then they would be touching each other. And if they are touching each other, there is no gap between them. Well maybe the apparent gap is merely a thinly occupied region of space. There is merely unevenly spread matter.
This model is very good at eliminating vacuums in the sense of empty objects. However, it is also rather good at eliminating ordinary objects. What we call objects would just be relatively thick deposits of matter. There would be only one natural object: Indian philosophers associate nothingness with lack of differentiation. Descartes was part of a tradition that denied action at a distance. This orthodoxy included Galileo. How could the great Kepler believe something so silly? How else could the universe be bound together by causal chains?
Hunger for ether intensified as the wave-like features of light became established. It is tautologous that a wave must have a medium. As the theoretical roles of the ether proliferated, physicists began to doubt there could be anything that accomplished such diverse feats. He presented his theory as a relational account of space; if there were no objects, there would be no space. Space is merely a useful abstraction. Even those physicists who wished to retain substantival space broke with the atomist tradition of assigning virtually no properties to the void.
Instead of having gravitational forces being propagated through the ether, they suggest that space is bent by mass. To explain how space can be finite and yet unbounded, they characterize space as spherical. When Edwin Hubble discovered that heavenly bodies are traveling away from each other like ants resting on an expanding balloon , cosmologists were quick to suggest that space may be expanding.
Quantum field theory provides especially fertile ground for such speculation. To say that vacuums have energy and energy is convertible into mass, is to deny that vacuums are empty. Many physicists revel in the discovery that vacuums are far from empty. Frank Wilczek , Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow , as well as Lawrence Krauss explicitly claim that this answers the question of why there is something rather than nothing. The basic idea goes back to an issue raised by the symmetry of matter and anti-matter.
Given that the symmetry implies equality, matter and anti-matter should have annihiliated each other. Creation should have been aborted. Why is there NOW something particles rather than nothing mere energy in a quantum field? This question was answered by calculations suggesting that there was about a billionth more matter than anti-matter. Although it is still possible for the universe to be without particles, the slight numeric imbalance biases the universe toward states in which there are many particles. A small random change can trigger a phase transition analogous to the transformation of very cold liquid beer into solid beer when the cap of the bottle is popped suddenly reducing the pressure in the bottle.
A proud physicist is naturally tempted to announce these insights through the bullhorn of metaphysics. But philosophers interested in the logic of questions will draw attention to the role of emphasis in framing requests for explanations. But for rhetorical effect, physicists anachronistically back-date their domain of discourse to the things of nineteenth century physics. Philosophers complain of misleading advertising. They asked one question and the proud physicists answered a different question. Lawrence Krauss defends the switch as an improvement.
Often scientists make progress by altering the meaning of key terms. Why stick with an intractable and arguably meaningless question?