I think GP's point was specifically about science answering the questions like "why is there something rather than nothing?"; relativity and QFT don't say anything about this question.
(Though lacking falsifiability isn't necessarily such a bad thing even for scientific theories anyway.)
I think the spirit of the question is why anything---atoms, consciousnesses, laws of nature, quantum fields, etc.---exists, instead of nothing at all---no atoms, consciousnesses, laws of nature, fields, etc. QFT doesn't answer this question, does it?
Yes, it answers these questions for all of those things except quantum fields. Why those fields exist we do not yet know, and may never know. But reducing the question to a single thing with an unknown origin rather than many things with (allegedly) unknown origins is still progress, particularly since that last remaining "thing" is not actually a thing that exists. And if you want to go down that rabbit hole, you should read this first:
How does it answer why consciousness or laws of nature exist? I included atoms as only one of the items on the list for a reason.
Not to say science isn't useful or that it hasn't made progress in explaining things. But the line of thought that this question is related to is, loosely, whether there need be any ultimate, necessary explanation to things and what kind of explanation that would be, or whether explanations bottom out at brute, contingent facts. This kind of topic, regardless of whether your answer is a necessary existence or brute fact, doesn't seem to be scientific---or would you disagree?
> How does it answer why consciousness or laws of nature exist?
That's a longer story than will fit in an HN comment. But the TL;DR is that once you have atoms, that leads to chemistry, which leads to biology, which leads to brains, which leads to consciousness and all the other interesting things that brains do. But these are all emergent phenomena. There's nothing brains do that cannot be explained in terms of atoms.
> whether there need be any ultimate, necessary explanation to things and what kind of explanation that would be, or whether explanations bottom out at brute, contingent facts
You're flirting with teleology here. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm making an observation here, not a value judgement.
It is an open question whether there is an "ultimate, necessary explanation to things". But science can shed some light on that by demonstrating that if there is an "ultimate, necessary explanation to things" it almost certainly has nothing to do with us humans. We're just the result of rolling countless trillions of cosmic dice in one tiny corner of the multiverse. That's not the answer that most people who ask the question of "ultimate, necessary explanation to things" want to hear, but all the evidence points to that being the truth. And so the best explanation of people asking this question hoping for a different answer is that they are engaging in the same kind of wishful thinking as, say, erstwhile inventors of perpetual motion machines. Science can't prove that it's impossible to do an end-run around the laws of thermodynamics, but there is still a reason that perpetual motion is the canonical example of crackpottery.
>There's nothing brains do that cannot be explained in terms of atoms.
But the relationship between brain chemistry and consciousness is at best correlating certain conscious states with certain neurological states. The question is why there is consciousness at all. Maybe it's an emergent phenomena, sure, but it's not clear to me how the arising of consciousness from matter can be completely characterized through science. One reason is because science deals only with physical things, but consciousness is a non-physical thing. No doubt there is relevant science, but I don't know that science alone provides an explanation for why we are not philosophical zombies. You can, of course, take Dennett's view that qualia don't really exist, but in defending this view he did a lot of... philosophy.
And QFT explaining laws of nature would be strange considering QFT is included in the laws of nature.
>teleology
Well, I'm not positing that there's any purpose or telos involved in these explanations, just that there are explanations---there are reasons why things are the way they are ("why" in the sense of material or efficient causes, not final causes).
>It is an open question whether there is an "ultimate, necessary explanation to things". But science can shed some light on that by demonstrating that if there is an "ultimate, necessary explanation to things" it almost certainly has nothing to do with us humans. We're just the result of rolling countless trillions of cosmic dice in one tiny corner of the multiverse. That's not the answer that most people who ask the question of "ultimate, necessary explanation to things" want to hear, but all the evidence points to that being the truth. And so the best explanation of people asking this question hoping for a different answer is that they are engaging in the same kind of wishful thinking as, say, erstwhile inventors of perpetual motion machines. Science can't prove that it's impossible to do an end-run around the laws of thermodynamics, but there is still a reason that perpetual motion is the canonical example of crackpottery.
So my point here is simply related to your first sentence---there are philosophical arguments as to why there must be an ultimate, necessary explanation, and there are philosophical reasons to believe these arguments fail. But I don't see science as being sufficient for adjudicating this dispute, as I think you'd agree.
(I would agree with your point about how science shows us just how small humanity is in the larger cosmos, though I'm not sure that's necessarily in contradiction with religion. But that's a whole other can of worms.)
>How ironic that you would say that in a thread about Daniel Dennett's passing. You have obviously not read "Consciousness Explained."
I mean, Dennett is denying the existence of qualia altogether, as I said, via philosophical argumentation. The argument that science tells the full story here is itself a philosophical one.
>You should watch this:
Yes, the bottoming out of explanations is exactly what's at stake. The idea of a necessary explanation is that the answer to the question of "why?" is that it must be that way, that it could not have been any other way---that's what it means for an explanation to be necessary. And there are arguments why there must be such a thing that could not have been any other way, and arguments against it---it's within the realm of philosophy. Feynman is right to note that scientific explanations can go no further past a certain point. It's a bit ironic that Feynman was so anti-philosophy when he gave a rather philosophical answer to what might seem like a straightforward scientific question at first glance.
>Yes, obviously. There are arguments for why the earth must be flat too. Why should I care about either? They're just wrong.
Well, the discipline of philosophy also includes people pointing out reasons why such arguments don't work, which seems worthwhile, just like science includes reasons why arguments for the flatness of the earth are untenable and reasons why the roundness of the earth is a far better explanation for the data.
> Dennett is denying the existence of qualia altogether
Not quite. Dennett's thesis is that qualia are illusions, not that they don't exist. Illusions exist, they are just sensory perceptions that don't reflect any actual underlying physical reality.
> The idea of a necessary explanation is that the answer to the question of "why?" is that it must be that way
Yes, I know that's the idea. But you can't get past the anthropic principle. Even if that is not the ultimate explanation, the fact that it could be, and the fact that there is overwhelming evidence that humans are not privileged in any way, means that even if there is a better answer, we can never find it because we can never rule out the anthropic principle. We have to make our peace with that, just as we have to make our peace with the Second Law and the halting problem.
> Well, the discipline of philosophy also includes people pointing out reasons why such arguments don't work, which seems worthwhile, just like science includes reasons why arguments for the flatness of the earth are untenable and reasons why the roundness of the earth is a far better explanation for the data.
Actually, scientists don't spend a lot of time debunking flat-earthers. They just write them off as crackpots who are not worth the bother. You're not going to get an NSF grant to study whether or not the earth is round.
I just mean to say that Dennett denies that there is anything that is "ineffable, intrinsic, private, [and] directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness". But my point is that this is a particular philosophical term whose existence and nature is being disputed, and that this is being done on philosophical grounds.
>Yes, I know that's the idea. But you can't get past the anthropic principle.
Well, the anthropic principle is more relevant for fine-tuning arguments, the question here is more whether or not there can be brute facts, but that aside, my contention is just that this dispute is not one that science adjudicates.
>Actually, scientists don't spend a lot of time debunking flat-earthers.
I mean, sure, because the scientific arguments for the roundness of the earth have been laid out and there's not much more left to say, but cases don't generally get so neatly closed in philosophy.
All of this is really just to say that there are areas of discussion where it's philosophy rather than science that has to be our instrument for adjudicating disputes. Maybe this area of discussion isn't interesting to you, but that's fine, not every subject in academia has to be interesting to you.
> the question here is more whether or not there can be brute facts
That depends on what you mean by "brute fact". Can you give me an example of one?
> there are areas of discussion where it's philosophy rather than science that has to be our instrument for adjudicating disputes
And I dispute that, and I believe I can support my position by refuting that very claim with science. If it is true that there exist "areas of discussion where it's philosophy rather than science that has to be our instrument for adjudicating disputes" then you should be able to give an example of such an area of discussion, and I predict that you can't.
BTW, I would like nothing better than for you to actually prove me wrong about this. But I've thought about this for a very long time and posed this challenge to a lot of people. If you succeed, you will be the first.
OK, I'd like nothing better than for you to show me that there's no such area.
Since we're talking about contingency...
I'll just lay out a version of the argument from contingency:
1. A contingent being (a being such that if it exists, it could have not-existed) exists.
2. All contingent beings have a sufficient cause of or fully adequate explanation for their existence.
3. The sufficient cause of or fully adequate explanation for the existence of contingent beings is something other than the contingent being itself.
4. The sufficient cause of or fully adequate explanation for the existence of contingent beings must either be solely other contingent beings or include a non-contingent (necessary) being.
5. Contingent beings alone cannot provide a sufficient cause of or fully adequate explanation for the existence of contingent beings.
6. Therefore, what sufficiently causes or fully adequately explains the existence of contingent beings must include a non-contingent (necessary) being.
7. Therefore, a necessary being (a being such that if it exists, it cannot not-exist) exists.
8. The universe, which is composed of only contingent beings, is contingent.
9. Therefore, the necessary being is something other than the universe.
I'd like you to tell me what premise you deny, and why you deny this premise on purely scientific grounds.
But I will also happily concede that something other than the universe exists. Quantum fields exist and they are not part of the universe. (However, I do not concede that quantum fields are non-contingent. They may or may not be, we simply don't know. There could be an infinite hierarchy of causation.)
For one, this isn't an ontological argument, this is a version of the cosmological argument.
I mean, I'm not even concerned about the truth or falsity of the conclusion of this argument. I posed this argument to you, and right away, we've started talking about ontological categories and what it means for something to exist. Have we not already started doing philosophy? Wasn't this supposed to be a purely scientific discussion?
> For one, this isn't an ontological argument, this is a version of the cosmological argument.
Potato, potahto.
> Have we not already started doing philosophy?
No. Establishing the meanings of words is part of science. You should read chapter 7 of David Deutsch's "The Fabric of Reality" and pay particular attention to the part where he says, "Languages are theories."
I mean, talking about what things exist, and what things don't, and what it means for something to exist are things that philosophers do as part of philosophy (specifically ontology). I suppose there's nothing wrong with Deutsch's characterization, I guess we can just call the philosophers who, in doing philosophy, discuss the meanings of words (like what it means to exist or, as Dennett and many other philosophers have, what it means to have free will, or all kinds of other terms) scientists who are actually doing science. If we use the terms this way, the academic discipline of philosophy seems perfectly justified since it's actually secretly scientific (they just don't know it themselves!).
But maybe more seriously (and hopefully more fruitfully), I should ask, according to Deutsch's/your characterization, what would count as doing philosophy as opposed to doing science? I would normally say "the things that academic philosophers do as part of their discipline", but it looks like that definition isn't going to stand.
> (And note that "something" and "nothing" in that sentence are terms of art with more precise meanings than the colloquial ones.)
Bingo. You are using a much more specific definition than I was. As the other person commenting said - I was rather hoping you would grasp the spirit of my point rather than zoning on the rather hastily chosen examples. But let's stick with that for a moment.
I picked "Why is there something rather than nothing" because it's often used as the poster-child of unanswerable yet important questions. You have to understand it in that spirit and interpret "everything" and "nothing" in the broadest possible terms.
I wasn't claiming anything about the cosmology or quantum fields - I'm saying that "when you take into account everything science will ever be able to touch - there will be something that remains unknowable. (you'll find that at least since Kant, this is a fairly uncontroversial viewpoint within Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science)
I think maybe the reason you struggle to appreciate the value of philosophy is because you use the irreducible wiggle room that is always present in language to frame discussions in such a way so that philosophy is always at a disadvantage. You're straw-manning rather than strong-manning my points and you seem very keen to frame me as some anti-science merchant of woo. (A characterisation which anyone that knows me would have highly amusing)
I am a huge believer in the scientific method and it's primacy. But I don't believe anyone with any degree of reflection can maintain the view that every fact about reality will one day fall to science.
> You are using a much more specific definition than I was.
But this is exactly the problem. If what you meant to ask was, "Why do quantum fields exist" why didn't you just say that? Instead you asked, "Why is there something rather than nothing" which is a vaguely defined open-ended question with a lot of emotional appeal but no intellectual substance, i.e. typical of those parts of contemporary philosophy that are not part of science.
> when you take into account everything science will ever be able to touch - there will be something that remains unknowable
Yes, that's true. But it's not clear that what remains unknowable actually matters. We may never know why quantum fields exist, but so what? We can know that they were not created by a personal God who loves us and wants us to be happy or any such nonsense. We can know that our lives are finite and there is no afterlife and so we have to be judicious in how we spend our time, and so wondering why quantum fields exist might not be the most important problem for us to be addressing. It's enough to know that they exist, and that they behave according to simple mathematical laws.
> I don't believe anyone with any degree of reflection can maintain the view that every fact about reality will one day fall to science.
We know with absolute certainty that this is the case because (tada!) science can demonstrate this (e.g. the halting problem) so we have to make our peace with the fact that there are things we cannot know. But I see no reason to believe that any question that doesn't fall to science will yield to philosophy.
(Though lacking falsifiability isn't necessarily such a bad thing even for scientific theories anyway.)