Nothing vs something

Question

Could it be that the famous question "why is there something instead of nothing" is misplaced?
This question presupposes that nothingness is the opposite of something but, metaphysically speaking, this may not be the case.

Let me clarify:

From a mathematical point of view we usually say that the opposite of "no object" is "at least one object" but from an ontological point of view there may be no such thing as "no object".
If the basis of reality (be it God, consciousness, quantum fluctuations or others) have always existed and always will exist, how can one even formulate the initial question?

After all, there is the possibility that nothingness is a logic contradiction, at the same level of 2 + 2 = 5.

Answer 1

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" is a special case of the question "Why does the universe behave this way instead of some other way?" Answers to questions of this kind appeal to some model of the universe, providing general rules that apply in a specific case; for example, apples fall because of the general rule of gravity.

Better answers are both simpler and explanatory of a wider range of phenomena. An ultimate Theory of Everything (TOE) would explain every phenomenon. The TOE would be an answer to "Why is there something rather than nothing?" - the answer being, because the universe follows these equations laid out in the TOE, and the equations predict something rather than nothing.

But that might seem unsatisfying. You might demand some reason the TOE is the way it is. This would be some formula or proposition - simpler or more fundamental than the TOE - that has the TOE as its consequence. In effect, this formula or proposition would itself be a simpler TOE.

But there is going to be some irreducible complexity. The TOE is not going to be a formula of length 0. It's going to be at least a few equations.

And this irreducible complexity is the limit of our ability to ask "Why is the universe like this?" We can't give any simpler or more fundamental answer than the simplest possible TOE, and the simplest possible TOE has nonzero complexity.

So ultimately the answer to a chain of "whys" has to be "just because that's how it is." At the end of a chain of "whys" you will always find some irreducible complexity that can't be explained in terms of anything simpler.

Answer 2

In Meinongian theory, objects that do not exist still have being. And hence we can formulate their opposite: objects that do have existence.

Answer 3

I suppose one way to try to paraphrase the idea is to say, "What if, for all variables x, x does not equal zero?" That there are no zero-cases? Then we'd see the problem: for then there'd be zero zero-cases. "Contradiction," as they say.

Another way to think of it is to ask what happens when we take the complement of a universe of discourse. This reduces to the empty discourse, and it seems to be an operation we can mentally perform, so the abstract possibility of "nothingness" seems apparent to us. Alternatively, we'd be claiming something like "reducing down infinitesimally to zero but never reaching it" as our closest equivalent to "ceasing to exist." I don't think that that would work, though, since at the end of the day, the iteration of the negative hyperoperators from the predecessor/subtraction base cases revolves around zero nevertheless (e.g. division is iterated subtraction "with an eye towards" zero), and the balance of any negative and positive number (including counterpart infinitesimals) is also still zero.

I think we'd effectively have to lack the concepts of negation, absence, emptiness, etc. for "nonexistence is impossible" to go through in the intended way, here. Ironically, the concept of nothingness as such would be proven to exist (externally) by our very lack of the concept, though (although then I guess we wouldn't ever "know" this).