Ontological Self-Grounding and Self-Consciousness: Fichte's Relevance...

Ontological Self-Grounding and Self-Consciousness: Fichte's Relevance to Leibniz's Question

Peter Sas

 Why is there something rather than nothing? This question seems impossible to answer, because anything that might explain why there is something will itself also be something and must therefore be explained as well. As Robert Nozick put it: "Any factor introduced to explain why there is something will itself be part of the something to be explained." (Nozick 1981, 115) What this shows, however, is not so much that the question is impossible to answer, but rather that the only possible explanation must involve some kind of circularity. That is to say: whatever explains the existence of everything must explain its own existence as well. It must be ontologically self-grounding or self-causing, i.e. the cause of its own existence. It is not surprising, therefore, that ontological self-grounding and self-causation have  become a relatively popular strategies in the burgeoning literature devoted to solving Leibniz's question (for overviews, see Wippel 2011; Holt 2012; Goldschmidt 2013; Leslie and Kuhn 2013).

It is surprising, however, that one important development of the strategy of ontological self-grounding has generally been overlooked in the recent literature. I mean the development this approach received in the absolute idealisms developed by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, where the primordial self-grounding entity – which supports the whole of existence – is identified with self-consciousness. Thus the absolute-idealist answer to Leibniz's question can be summarized as follows:
 
Everything exists because it is thought and/or experienced by an absolute Self who in turn exists because it thinks/experiences itself. Thus it is the Self's awareness of itself that lifts it – and thereby everything else – into existence.

Ontological Self-Grounding and Self-Consciousness: Fichte's Relevance to Leibniz's Question

Peter Sas

This doesn't make sense to me as any sort of "solution" or answer to the problem. It's really academic wordplay. This actually amounts to the intelligentsia inherently admitting that there must be a transcendent absolute vastly intelligent Being beyond time and space and limitation whose thoughts comprise our physical existence and its history. But not being willing to admit their ponderings to be inherently fruitless in addition to being contrary to the prevailing consensus world view and therefore taboo. 

"It" must be forever beyond all human understanding, since it must have always existed, no beginning, unless an equally incomprehensible endless regress is desired. This topic is fundamentally inherently humanly incomprehensible. It should be abandoned, as a subject of study that is totally futile to labor at. It needs to be recognized that there are absolute limits to what humans can understand, science or no. This would be quite an act of humility by academia.
 
The basic conundrum for the modern academic mindset is that contrary to the modern consensus world view, at base there logically absolutely must be some sort of creative Intelligence outside of space and time, that is responsible for the origination of the physical universe and especially the vast amount of complex functional specified information that intricately organizes the universe, including the laws of physics and their fine tuning. This amount of CFSI can not possibly originate from anything but Intelligence, not random fluctuations. And the astrophysical data overwhelmingly confirms that this Universe had an absolute beginning in the Big Bang.

This Being, outside the Universe, must logically be itself uncreated and have no beginning, and comprises the irrational and incomprehensible but necessarily real answer to the question why is there something not nothing. Unless an endless regression is hypothesized, but this is also irrational, and involving infinities, and is also incomprehensible.  

It boils down to the intelligentsia needing to buckle down under pressure, have some humility, and recognize a transcendental unknowable intelligent Source that itself had no beginning, no such limitation and that is totally forever beyond their ponderings. Like the prospect of an ape comprehending General Relativity.

Though I share the misgivings, I'm a bit less certain of this,

"It" must be forever beyond all human understanding, since it must have always existed, no beginning, unless an equally incomprehensible endless regress is desired. This topic is fundamentally inherently humanly incomprehensible. It should be abandoned, as a subject of study that is totally futile to labor at.

A few thoughts come to me, in no particular order.

While the physical body of humans comes from the dust and returns to dust, this need not apply to the spirit which gives us our own self-awareness. In some understandings of the nature of this 'self', our own self, it too has no beginning and no end.

Possibly this is not beyond human comprehension since we may occasionally have some transcendent moments where we may also recognise and grasp now and eternity through direct experience.

The idea of NOT labouring over the task of understanding is also part of various types of spiritual practice such as the koan in Zen Buddhism, the intent of which is to present a problem which cannot be solved and perhaps - though not necessarily easily - cause all our striving to cease and to thereby find ourselves in just such a transcendent eternity as just mentioned.

I guess I'm saying that to recognise the futility of trying to 'solve a problem' is a necessary step along that path.

Though I share the misgivings, I'm a bit less certain of this,


A few thoughts come to me, in no particular order.

While the physical body of humans comes from the dust and returns to dust, this need not apply to the spirit which gives us our own self-awareness. In some understandings of the nature of this 'self', our own self, it too has no beginning and no end.

Possibly this is not beyond human comprehension since we may occasionally have some transcendent moments where we may also recognise and grasp now and eternity through direct experience.

The idea of NOT labouring over the task of understanding is also part of various types of spiritual practice such as the koan in Zen Buddhism, the intent of which is to present a problem which cannot be solved and perhaps - though not necessarily easily - cause all our striving to cease and to thereby find ourselves in just such a transcendent eternity as just mentioned.

I guess I'm saying that to recognise the futility of trying to 'solve a problem' is a necessary step along that path.

Maybe so. But my words were in the context of logical, rational "scientific" thought, which is where we live 99.9% of the time, especially educated Westerners. Not higher states that may transcend that mode of consciousness. Typically, these insights, if real, can never be adequately conveyed to others in our normal Earthly grounded state in language or any other means of rational communication, so it's hard to say they matter culturally.

This Being, outside the Universe, must logically be itself uncreated and have no beginning, and comprises the irrational and incomprehensible but necessarily real answer to the question why is there something not nothing. Unless an endless regression is hypothesized, but this is also irrational, and involving infinities, and is also incomprehensible. 

Not sure how this follows? The Being must be outside the Universe?

I get the point about endless regression though not sure about the rest of it. Not clear why this universe would even be the measure of reality, given it could be the creation of some kind of sub-entity given how flawed it is - hardly the work of some uncreated Super Engineer?

I will admit not I'm not even sure this question, "Why is there Something instead of Nothing?" i[s] a huge problem. There is Something now, given I'm typing this out, and there could have always been Something and always be Something.