Inevitable Existence by Jesse Folsom

The search for a unified theory of everything is hardly a new idea. None have succeeded in formulating such a theory as yet, at least one for which there is any sort of consensus agreement, and even if they did, at least one problem would remain unanswered. Such a theory might explain why everything is as it is, but it would still leave unanswered why there is anything at all. From a materialist perspective, it would seem that nothing existing would be far simpler and more sensible than all the complexities and interactions involved with something existing. Yet, the universe obviously exists.

What if the greater likelihood of nothing were illusory? What if the existence of something was not only more likely, but inevitable? Paul Merriam is attempting to formulate a theory which implies its own necessary existence without reference to any conditional statement. It's inevitability must, therefore, be totally self sufficient, proved without doubt within the statement itself, in the context of very bare predicate logic.

The difficulties of formulating such a theory are daunting enough in themselves, but the creation of such a theory is insufficient. Merriam must then attempt to correlate the structure of the theory to the physical universe. If this can be accomplished, a strong argument can be made that the theory is representative of the universe as a whole, but Merriam plans to go beyond even this. His claim is that the universe is actually pure mathematical structure, and that the theory is not just a representation of the universe, but is the universe itself. This is all towards the goal of a materialist explanation of existence.

Thus, an outline of his argument is:

1. There exists a theory T, such that T's existence is shown to be logically inevitable within the structure of T.
2. Some version of T, which we will label T_n, has a structure which reflects the structure of the universe itself.The universe is actually a set of mathematical relationships; it is pure structure, with all appearances of substance arising from this structure.The structure of T_n, being identical to that of the universe, not only represents the universe, but, because of the universe's nature, is the universe itself.Since the existence of T is logically inevitable, the universe itself, being T, is logically inevitable.

This idea is tempting, but is riddled with implied difficulties and even impossibilities. The existence of any such theory as T, which by implication necessitates its own existence in an unconditional fashion, is doubtful. It is easy enough to make a theory which states its own necessary existence, but there is no way to verify it. The basic structure of such a theory would be:

              T: Theory T necessarily exists.

Given that it contains no reference to any outside structure, there is simply no way to verify it. Its veracity is therefore indeterminate; it is not even worthy of being called “wrong”. This is why the theory cannot simply state its own logical inevitability; it must imply it through more verifiable assertions.

Merriam argues that since, according to part 3 of his argument above, all existence is relational anyway, T could exist relationally without any more “absolute” existence. Indeed, he goes so far as to say that it could exist in relation to itself. So long as it is possible that it exists, its relationship to itself could allow it to “bootstrap” itself into existence. Leaving aside whether it is even possible that such a thing exists, this would imply that anything which could possibly exist, does exist, since they would exist in relationship to itself.

An imperfect example is an imagined pink elephant towering over an imagined blue mouse. These two entities have a relationship to each other, he claims. Things must exist to relate to other things. But, of course, what exists in this case is actually a mental process, not an actual pink elephant and blue mouse. The pink elephant and blue mouse do not actually exist. This, in itself, should do away with the idea of purely relational existence, but in truth, the status of T, in this sense, is even worse. It is not relating to another object, even an imaginary object, just itself. Merriam says it exists “in relation to itself”, a circular and rather meaningless concept, and would mean that anything conceivable exists, which is clearly not true.

This brings us to a related difficulty. A theory is by its nature a mental object, residing within one or more consciousnesses. People formulate theories to represent some aspect of reality. But in order for this theory to accomplish its stated goal, showing the inevitability of the universe itself, the theory must not merely represent the universe. It must be the universe. Even if true, this implies that the universe is a mental object, and must have a consciousness to reside in. Given that the universe, apparently, predated any embodied consciousnesses, this places the materialist ends of this formulation in peril.

Another problem is that, even if the structure of the universe is purely relational, this leaves one big question: What does the universe relate to? If everything only exists in terms of relationships to other objects, what does the totality relate to to motivate its own existence? Saying it exists in relation to itself is meaningless, and further sounds rather akin to absolute existence. And what is the universe except the sum of its constituents?

Another problem is that a theory is static. A theory, once changed, is a different theory. Therefore, any theory of the universe cannot really be about how the universe is in all its detail, but only its regularities, those aspects which are unchanging. The differences within the universe from moment to moment, much less across eons of time, prove that the structure within those regularities is highly variable. Thus, this still leaves the question open as to why things are as they are. Why do humans exist, for instance. Modern experiments seem to show that even the quantity of matter in the universe can change, so this is not a regularity. So even if this theory were found, the question would remain why anything but a series of regularities would exist. Perhaps because regularities are only meaningful because they regulate the behavior of something? Even with this possible explanation, the deep logical quandaries of such a theory begin to be revealed.

Another issue, which Merriam freely acknowledges, is that a universe of pure structure disregards such phenomena as qualia. Such features, which are ineffable by nature, cannot be expressed in any symbolic language. As such, they could not be expressed in the symbolic language of the theory, nor even truly addressed within it. Yet even time is qualia-like in this respect, and a theory of the universe that doesn't explain time is a poor theory indeed.

What really dooms this theory, however, is how inconceivable it is to even get it off the ground. While Merriam denies this, while it is relatively trivial to write a theory that implies its own existence, implying necessary existence is an altogether different matter. Establishing necessary existence in the first place is likely impossible. If one could establish the logically inevitable existence of anything, one could then prove the necessary existence of at least some universe, such that the thing would exist.

Well, you could, except for an even deeper problem with this formulation, which involves the nature of logic itself. Merriam and many other modern scientists and mathematicians seem to think that logic and mathematics exist somehow independent of the universe, almost as if they were some sorts of Platonic ideals. But the truth of the matter is that logic arises as an epiphenomenon of the definitions we give symbolic language. That this cannot be not this arises from the definition of the word “this”. In other words, trying to claim some sort of truth-value to logic outside of semantics results in a circular argument. The logical properties of “this” are inherent to the definition of “this”. It is just a word, a collection of sounds with an arbitrarily assigned meaning. The symbols of formal logic are not words, but their meaning is arbitrarily assigned, nonetheless. If logic arises from language, then how can it be used to construct any universe, much less a logically inevitable one, in the absence of such symbolic thinking?