Much ontology and metaphysics as practiced by modern professional philosophers is often concerned with the dry conceptual and logical matters. But there still remains an interest in what is perhaps the oldest ad most mysterious metaphysical question: Why is there anything at all?
The Oxford philosopher Derek Partfit tackles this question. Parfit raises the much-debated question of why the initial conditions of our universe were "fine-tuned" in such a way as to allow stars, planets and life to exist. Some say this was just a coincidence; some that God designed it so; some that ours is merely one of countless universes only a few of which are fine-tuned.
But this does not touch the "Why anything?" question.
Antecedently, there seems to be a number of "global possibilities", for instance that every conceivable world exists, that only some possible worlds exist and that nothing exists. Perhaps the last, which is called the Null Hypothesis, would leave nothing to be explained.
Parfit maintains that even such an empty scenario or a non-scenario would still require explanation though he does suggest that it might be the easiest possibility to explain because it is the simplest. But whether simple or not it does not get us much further forward, since it is not the possibility that actually obtains: here we all are, so there is, in fact, a universe.
Interestingly Parfit asks whether there could be a theory about the existence of the universe that leaves nothing to be explained. The belief in God is often supposed to provide such a complete explanation but Parfit considers instead a slightly different position, which he calls the "Axiarchic View" which is that the universe exists because its existence is good. This view he rejects however (just as, implicitly, he rejects the theistic view) on account of the notorious problem of evil.
The interesting answer Parfit eventually leaves us with is that it may be just a "brute fact" that the universe exists. On this view, not only would the universe have no cause, it would have no explanation of any kind. So we should not look for any selector, any feature like being best or most simple, or including God, which accounts for why there is a universe or many universes or no universes. The universe just “is”.
The mind may revolt at such apparent arbitrariness or randomness but Parfit argues that there is no need for hidden machinery behind the existence of the universe. It is clear that in such cosmological speculations the human mind is working at the very limits of its capacity (interesting). Critics of Parfit's argument may wonder whether the timeless overarching framework of logic, which he takes to support the plausibility of the Brute Fact View, does not itself presuppose that reality is not in the end random and arbitrary. However that may be, such "ultimate" metaphysical inquiries about the universe and its origins seem sure to remain a part of philosophical inquiry as long as human beings confront the mystery of existence.
