Mageth

I hope you meant that in a joking way and didn't think I was criticizing you in any way, ex-xian.

BTW, I noticed the link I posted just takes you to a page from which you would need to select "public lectures", which takes you to another page from which you would need to select "The Beginning of Time."

ex-xian

Yes, my statement was made with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

please forgive the smilie abuse. i rarely post in the upper fora.

gumb

i don't beleive in the big bang i can't see that the 'supposed' bang is any more knowable than what 'supposedly' came before. and you have to accept a lot of theoretical stuff on blind faith to believe the big bang in the first place.

Mageth

i don't beleive in the big bang

Fortunately, belief only has effect on actual existence in fairy tales. Clap and believe so Tinkerbell will live!

i can't see that the 'supposed' bang is any more knowable than what 'supposedly' came before.

Well, there is actual evidence of the Big Bang, so much so that most scientists consider it a pretty solid theory.

and you have to accept a lot of theoretical stuff on blind faith to believe the big bang in the first place.

Umm, no, not on blind faith. There's actual evidence of the Big Bang.

Tyler Durden

In order to speak about a potential state of affairs you will make certain presuppositions. These presuppositions prevent the possibility of the question.

This seems to be a blanket assertion, and poorly conceived at best. AFAIK, Stephen Hawking limits his speculative physics to the inception of the big bang.

No, and unless you can successfully show how it is possible first in order to do so, conceiving a possible state of affairs independent of time remains impossible.
Glad you asked. Elsewhere you proposed a noble view to the claims of naturalism - a skeptical attitude. Skepticism is a nice tool, probably the only true philosophical impulse, but even a Cartesian or a Humean skeptic needs to recognize what exactly entails the forms of their argumentation in order to maintain a valid criticism of anything.

You are having difficulties on a number of things - the other posters were keen to point them out - but I want to address specifically the sloppiness in the treatment of causation and temporality inherent within your argumentation. What you defines as "logically precedent" is in actuality a creature of causation, and by definition causation entails temporality. A state of affairs "logically precedent" to another state of affairs is a causal chain. In any potential state of affairs, an event that follows a cause, whether that is the first cause of existence, necessarily presupposes the existence of time, in which a current of events obtains.

There is no possible cause without the existence of time as a property of the state of affairs described by an causal chain. This dovetails nicely with the fundamental limit of the laws of physics at the Planck length, or the width of a photon particle, in which the properties of time and space at the Planck limit of the big bang may be infinitely large. Ergo, there is no need to postulate about either the 'location' of the big bang, or the 'cause' of the big bang.

There are other models of cosmology you may not have noticed, especially on infinite regress and finitely closed loops of temporality, but I see no need to get in them now.

Once we attempt to speculate about a possible "state of affairs" without the forms of perception, (which is tantamount to the denial of any spatial or temporal properties of a possible state of affairs) we have entered the realm of the logic of illusion, home to the philosophical wasteland of theism and other bad candidates of metaphysics. Our reason is an instrument, a tool characterized by the drive for the truth of the meaning of a state of affairs. With its incessant desire for the unconditioned explanation, an object that surpasses the bound of sense, or the forms of perception, beyond all empirical worth, reason that outstrips possible experience will always fabricate or inspire transcendent metaphysics; which is by and large rotten philosophy. Experience precedes and is superior to rationality, which encompasses our language and even the formal logic, so I would argue that our philosophical thought should function along the guidelines of perception and experience as opposed to a potentially transcendent philosophy, complete within its ambiguity and sloppy equivocation that doesn't really pay attention to its assertions and the consequent implications. Since logic is contained in the grammatical structure of the language we use, our linguistic thought are beholden to the forms of perception, which preconditions our experience with the assumptions of spatio-temporality. Therefore, experience is what constitutes the tools of our thoughts, which are our grammar, rationality, and logic.

gumb

i don't accept the evidence. it doesn't seem right to me. i can do that if I want.

and just because you believe in the big bang this doesn't make it the case. your tinkerbell analogy cuts both ways.

Mageth

i don't accept the evidence. it doesn't seem right to me. i can do that if I want.

Well, of course you can. Don't recall saying that you couldn't, though. But you've got this wrong; the evidence is there, and is very solid; what you don't accept is the theory that explains the evidence. What theory do you accept that better explains the evidence, BTW?

and just because you believe in the big bang this doesn't make it the case. your tinkerbell analogy cuts both ways.

I don't "believe" in the Big Bang; I've considered the evidence, read about the theory based on the evidence, and now have reached the conclusion that the theory is a good fit for the evidence, is the best explanation we have at this time for the evidence and to explain the beginning of the universe. If someone comes up with a new theory to explain the evidence, to explain the beginning of the universe, then I'll consider that as well. If it fits the evidence better than the Big Bang, I'll accept it as the new best theory. I don't have any stock in the Big Bang being "the" theory to explain the beginning of the universe.

So no, in this case, the Tinkerbell analogy does not cut both ways.

metacristi

thomaq


In the last 10 years more and more scientists became dissatisfied with the old cliche that 'it is futile to ask what was before the Big Bang'.On good reason in my opinion.This answer is only an elegant way to avoid the problem,personally I do not think that the positivist approach is more constructive.Some brought this pragmatism at the extreme claiming that Universe appeared out of nothing in a quantum fluctuation.Unfortunately for its supporters this approach is not too persuasive logically,indeed from the fact that what we can name our time cannot be defined 'before' Big Bang does not follow that the Universe appeared 'out of nothing'.From 'nothing' cannot appear 'something'.
As far as I know the 'multiverse hypothesis' (if I remember well John Gribbin 'coined' this term) is enough well established now in spite of its detractors through the proposals of Andrei Linde and Alan Guth.Indeed it is very speculative and it's very hard to see how can it be falsified (at least now) anyway it's better than nothing.

As a little digression here (interesting I hope though I am aware that it will 'stir the waters' here) of course this does not make the 'God hypothesis' (God defined merely as the creator of our universe) less probable objectively,at least for the moment.Indeed we cannot make an objective difference between 'God hypothesis' and naturalism when applied at the problem of how universe appeared (and generally at all ontological problems).However since science is pragmatic and God has not played a fruitful role so far (being also a non falsifiable hypothesis) in all our succesfull scientific theories God cannot be accepted as an explanation (the so called 'God of the gaps');it cannot be accepted epistemically.Still this means nothing ontologically...

Returning at the main topic the easiest to follow article I found on the net explaining the multiverse hypothesis is:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/myst...ml/guth_1.html



I think you've chosen the right forum.There are many scientists who question the scientific status of any would be hypothesis about what happened 'before the Big Bang' claiming that it belongs entirely to philosophy.I'm not a supporter of this view:in fact there is no necessity to believe that what is now not falsifiable will remain so forever...What seems today as belonging to metaphysics might (why not?) become the science of tomorrow...there is no good reason to think otherwise.

Theli

What is it that you find disagreeable about the big bang theory?
And what reason do you have for not accepting the evidence?

madmax2976

Hey thomas,

You seem to think using the phrase "logically preceeded" solves the problem. It doesn't.

You haven't defined "identity" here, but assuming this refers to some features of something that exists, you are obviously incorrect. Something must exist before it can have any characteristics at all - before implying a temporal relationship.

How can anything be logically deduced to "preceed" something without a time frame? What it is that you are claiming that makes it a "logical" relationship without a time reference?

This is a contradiction. If there must first be an "existant", you can't then say they are "simultaneous". But even disregarding that, your reference is still a temporal one as "first" and "simultaneous" are both temporal terms.

False. It could have been preceeded by other time.