Craig --:
You should be disappointed only if you DID FIND the 'ex nihilo'
principle ("Nothing comes from nothing") in a logic book. That's not
the kind of thing logic books are informative about. Even a science
book won't help you.
I'm not looking for information, Craig. I'm looking for logical validation
of a
principle that is just as true to the empiricist as it is to the
philosopher. One would expect to find the "empty set" of mathematics
treated in a text of syllogistic premises. My disappointment concerns its
absence in a logical treatise. (I do expect to find it, however, perhaps
under a different category of logical principles.)
A science book can sometimes tell you that X came from Y
(e.g., Saturn's rings came from cosmic dust), but if science doesn't
know where X came from, then it doesn't always know whether
it came from something rather than nothing.
Insufficient knowledge about a phenomenon may lead investigators to
theorize about its origin, but until such a theory is validated by empirical
evidence, it cannot become a scientific principle. As David Darling said,
the cosmologists "have not got a clue" as to the source of the Big Bang, and
their theories are based on speculation which does not pass muster as
scientific fact.
"Nothing comes from nothing" is a METAPHYSICAL rule that
says "Keep looking", but it can't guarantee there's anything to find.
Wherever did you get the idea that a metaphysical principle says "keep
looking"? Does the equation 2 + 2 = 4 invite us to look for exceptions?
The law of conservation of energy states that energy may neither be created
nor destroyed; therefore the sum of all the energies in a system is a
constant. Does this mean that if we look long enough, we'll find a system
that violates this law? If the principles of logic and nature were that
vulnerable, scientific methodology would have been abandoned long ago.
While I accept the caveat that absolute truth is inaccessible to man, I
shall continue to regard the 'ex nihilo' principle as fundamental to all
theoretical premises. And I would hope that it would not be viewed as a
disputed issue.
Regards,
Ham
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
