aleph_0

Even using mere finite sets, you are still assuming that ZFC axioms apply to sets of physical objects, so this much you and everybody else here have already conceded. Moreover, my point is not to prove that there are infinite sets of disjoint physical objects, but to ask what is contradictory about supposing it. Thus, I do not need to prove the axiom of infinity for physical objects, but to ask what is contradictory about it's hypothetically being true. So the burden of proof is actually not on me, since I am merely denying the claim that people on this forum make, that there can be no infinite quantity. I refuse to accept this because the case has not been made to satisfaction, and so I am demanding a more thorough argument. A theory with absolutely no evidence is to be ignored, not dismissed as demonstrably untrue. My question is how can people state that it is impossible (not just not-yet-proven) for there to be infinite quantities. I don't take the point. Are you asserting that there cannot be e^(e^(e^79)) of anything? I don't know what could possibly be a "lack of specific multiplicity," but each set is well-defined. We know what the natural numbers are and we know what a set of disjoint physical objects is. You assign one element of one set to one element of another--that's all you do for a mapping. One instance of this is the mapping from the set of natural numbers to the even numbers: f(n) = 2n. It is actually a bijective mapping, and each set is infinite. The fact that I gave the mapping by using a computational procedure is insignificant, since I have only used this to name the map rather than create it. The map (and all correspondences, for that matter) exist whether they are named or not. All I'm asking is whether it is self-contradictory to suppose that a map from the natural numbers to some set of disjoint physical objects could be injective. What could this mean? Do you deny that there are sets of physical objects? Do you deny that the set of chairs in the room I am occupying is a set?

I have to admit, I just don't find him interesting. And he's English.

I don't think this is going to help out, really, since I'm just talking about sets of disjoint objects. These could be electrons or asteroids for all I care. Note, however, that I do not need to appeal to this ordering, nor does my question appeal to any ordering. Again I emphasize that correspondences exist whether people are aware of them or not. Thus, a pairing that some human being could not, in finite time, represent or think of, is still a pairing. The pairing does not need to be given as a computational procedure, for any arbitrary input--it can be an arbitrary association of some integers with some objects. That no person will ever know all of the correspondences is unimportant for the same reason that it is unimportant (to the question of quantity) that no person will ever think of the correspondence between the number of atoms in my computer and the set of that many natural numbers. If this is the ultimate response, then I think you concede my point, because a scientific theory which posits gremlins cannot be rejected out of hand--it can only be rejected on the basis of lack of evidence, but if evidence were ever presented one would then accept the hypothesis. I have said elsewhere how I think such evidence might conceivably be given, but that's not even important. The point that I want to establish is that such a notion is not self-contradictory or unintelligible. I just want to establish that one cannot dismiss as meaningless, a theory of the universe which incorporates some claim of an infinite quantity. That we could not finish such a construction does not entail that such a correspondence wouldn't exist. Again, the correspondences are not purely mental, and they're not contingent upon us in any way. That we could not, for instance, ever actually count out e^(e^(e^79)) of anything does not thereby entail that the number is not a quantity. If it is an axiom, then it shouldn't follow from anything. If it follows, then there must be an argument. I'm not criticizing the axiom, I'm disputing that the axiom tells us anything about this particular subject. In the same way, if somebody told me that bunnies are asexual because of the law of identity, I would challenge that the two have nothing to do with each other, and before moving on in argument I would need some demonstration of the connection. If there is no boundary in the sense that no two things can be distinguished, then yes, this is correct. However, nothing about the supposition of an infinite quantity implies the impossibility of distinguishing two things. These are two different senses of "boundary". One is a boundary between two distinct things, and another is an end-point. The "boundary" between red and green, if we are to speak in such odd terms, is their different properties. Take away this "boundary" and there is no way to distinguish the two. The boundary between me and my seat is a line in space. Take this away, in some sense--i.e. if there were no line between me and my seat--then it'd be a fluid melding of my butt and the chair, and one couldn't distinguish between them. The boundary on a set of numbers is just the number which is greater than or equal to all numbers therein. What is it bounded from? Nothingness? That isn't a thing, so taking away the boundary doesn't cause a melding of two things, where the distinction between them can no longer be made. The set can be distinguished from other sets, and from the lack of any set.

I should note that, even if we do accept that infinite quantities do not exist, it remains to be seen that infinite quantities of causes are impossible, since causes are not actual, independent existents.

Two points of response: first, I don't believe this is a problem; second, if it were, I think there is an equivalent formulation which is not subject to any such objection. 1) Note that the one-to-one correspondence between the set of natural numbers between 1 and 44, and the set of Presidents in US history is not due to a mental construction. The correspondence between the two is due to the quantity of Presidents, which is independent of human thought. There are many correspondences which exist between numbers and objects which nobody has or will identify. Likewise, a correspondence between the natural numbers and a set of disjoint physical objects could exist though nobody may list every assignment therein. Though numbers do not exist, the facts of mathematical structure are objective, and I'm only appealing to these facts. 2) I may rephrase the question thus: Is it possible for there to be some set S of disjoint physical objects such that for any arbitrary set N of natural numbers, there is some injection from N to S?

I think you forgot to blame him for the holocaust, too. I don't know what you did to get your license revoked, and I don't really know what kinds of things warrant that. Getting caught ten miles over the speed limit more than five times? No big deal. Drunk driving in a school zone while trafficing Muslim terrorists? Pretty bad. Given that I don't know the details, I'm not going to judge on that account. The government monopoly on roads does not give you the freedom to negotiate the terms on which you'll use the roadways, and given a free market perhaps you'd take a commuter train instead, so you thought, "They took my money forcibly to pay for this road, so I'll use it and I'll damn well use it how I please." If that meant that you were speeding but were (correctly) confident in your ability to control the vehicle in spite of this (maybe you were in a speed trap and police were looking to drum up revenue by going hard on BS offenses), I don't think that's bad at all, you really did nothing wrong. If you were drunk driving, or driving at wild speeds, you were putting other people's lives in danger, as well as your own. That's both immoral and rightfully illegal even under the unideal, non-capitalistic circumstances. And I tend to think that whether it was right or wrong to have driven without a license is contingent on whether it was right or wrong to do what had earned your suspension. As for whether you did anything wrong to the individual, I don't know, that's a little too muddled for me to know where to come down. But I did want to say that, depending on your particular violations, you might not be the trash that everybody here seems to accuse you of being--and the mere fact that you're obviously interested in whether you did wrong is evidence that you're a long way from evil. In any case, you're obviously bad at getting away with breaking the law--even if it's an improper law--so you seem to be doing yourself a disservice by this kind of... let's call it civil disobedience, for the sake of charitable interpretation.

Okay, this topic has been carrying on for quite some time in no less than two other topics, so I thought it best to organize the conversation and possibly bring it away from other topics in order not to distract from their main points. The controversy is over the question, may we dismiss any hypothesis about the universe which makes claim to an actual infinite quantity, without (additional) empirical investigation. That is to say, is it a necessary falsehood that, for any set S of physical objects, the size of that set is infinite? To make the conversation exact, by "infinity" or "infinite quantity" I just mean an injective map from the natural numbers to some set of physical objects. A map is an assignment of some objects to others. For instance, there is a map which assigns 1 to Washington, 2 to Adams, ..., and 44 to Obama. This map is perfectly clear and presumably uncontroversial. Maps are just functions, which means that for any element in the domain (here, the natural numbers from 1 to 44) there is exactly one associated element in the range (the set of United States Presidents). An example of a relation which is not a function would be the one that assigns 1 to both Washington and Adams. Because 1 gets associated to (or "sent to") two distinct objects in the range, it is not a function. However, the map which sends 1, 2, 3, ... all to Washington is still a map. It's just not an injective map. If we denote the element which gets mapped to by 1 as f(1), and likewise the object which gets mapped to by n as f(n), then an injective map is one that satisfies the following conditional: If f(n) = f(m) then n = m. Obviously the first map we had was injective, for if the map sent n to Hoover and m to Hoover, then n = m, and likewise for all other Presidents. Obviously the map which sent all natural numbers to Washington was not injective, since f(1) = Washington = f(2), but 1 =/= 2. In the case of finite sets, what this means is obvious: If you have an injective map from the domain to the range, then the domain is smaller in quantity (or equal to in quantity) than the range. For instance, 44 is smaller than in quantity (or equal to in quantity) the number of Presidents in United States History. The same holds in the infinite case, in some sense. So the question is, is it necessarily false that there may be some injective map from the set of natural numbers into some set of physical objects, i.e. can we rule out such a hypothesis without your having to check Wikipedia to see if there is any evidence for or against? We will ask the question of sets of physical objects, such that no two elements in the set share any material parts, thus avoiding some annoying gadflies. I've counted five basic arguments for the negative answer on this forum, each of which I find deficient. 1) The concept of "quantity" precludes infinity. I have seen no argument to this effect, merely the bald claim. Even if you have some special notion of what "quantity" means as a term, we may simply look at the definition of "infinite quantity" I gave above. Can there be an injective map from the set of natural numbers into some set of (disjoint) physical objects? What is contained in this question which necessitates an answer, "no"? It is only an answer to this question in which I'm interested, and not any special group jargon about the word "quantity". 2) Argument by induction. The argument goes, "Of all the things you've observed in your life, have any of them been infinite?" Naturally, the answer is no. This is supposed to be convincing for the same reason that one is convinced all ravens are black by the fact that every raven one has observed has been black. I have two objections. First, induction clearly does not apply to quantity (or perhaps more broadly, bijective maps), as one cannot argue "Of all the things you've seen in your life, have you ever seen n of them, for some very large n?" If we let n = 1,000,000, then the answer would be "no", and I would thereby conclude that nothing has quantity 1,000,000 in spite of the fact that I'm convinced of atomic physics and the rough estimate that the table in front of me has a few more than 1,000,000 atoms. Secondly, even if this argument were valid to cast some doubt on an actual infinite quantity, it would not answer the question with which I began this post. Namely, it would not allow me to necessarily rule out any hypothesis on the basis of the fact that it makes claim to some actual infinity. If a given hypothesis were to make such a claim, and were fully capable of accounting for and predicting every single event observed in the past, and from now on, I would come to believe that hypothesis as a verified theory in spite of any such inductive argument. 3) Identity. Some have said that the notion of an actual infinity violates the law of identity, which states that everything which is, is; or put another way, everything has a specific identity. However, I don't see how this law is violated by an actual infinity. On another recent topic about the claim that "existence exists", it was noted that this statement carries no more philosophical weight than to point out that "nothing is not a thing", that one cannot contradict oneself. In the same way, since the law of identity seems to say basically this, I don't see how the law of identity has anything to bear on this topic. It has been said that infinity is not a "specific" quantity, as if it is a quantity, but just not a specific one. But using the notion of infinity stated in the beginning, this is clearly not true. We know exactly what a map is, and exactly what an injective map is, and what the set of natural numbers are, so we should know exactly what an injective map from the natural numbers to some other set is, regardless of which set we are talking about. Thus there is nothing "unspecific" about this conception of infinity. Thus in order to pursue this line of argument, one needs to state how exactly the law of identity precludes the possibility of such an injective map, or how the notion of an injective map as I've described above is somehow not specific. 4) Lack of evidence. One person has pointed out that there is no evidence to suppose that there is an infinite quantity, and I agree to this. It is not my claim that there is an infinite quantity, but only that we cannot rule it out as a possible hypothesis. 5) Axiom. Nobody has stated this, but most seem to think that the finiteness of the universe is an axiom which cannot intelligibly be questioned. Yet I do not have this axiom. I have consciousness, A equals A, and perhaps some others like rules of logic, but nothing about finiteness or infinity. Assuming that finiteness of the universe is not an axiom, then if people on this forum believe it, there must be some argument to that effect. Yet I have not been able to find a sound, non-circular such argument. In your response, if you are pressing one of these five arguments, please identify it in your post to help me identify what your claim is, and exactly what in my response to this argument is incomplete or mistaken. [Edit: Note, this topic is distinct from the other topic labeled "The Finite and the Infinite" or something, because this conversation 1) contains several arguments not therein contained, and is disputing the arguments which are therein contained, and 2) this topic does not make any reference to the point about "eternity" used in that other one. So I believe I'm not guilty of reproducing the same topic in multiple places.]

I argue that a human cannot have, as justification for a belief, an infinity of reasons because man's mind is limited and cannot contain an infinity of reasons. There may be ways to state the nature of a collection of reasons so as to indicate otherwise, but taken at face value I don't think this can reasonably be disputed. Right, when reason is considered as something that a human being has in mind concerning a fact. Yet I think that there are other kinds of "reason" that are not thoughts in a person's mind--namely, the reason why an object is in the place that it is. This reason is not just in the human mind, though the mind may grasp the reason. The reason is an objective fact, and there may be infinitely many such facts which necessitate a state of affairs, in the sense I described in my previous post. Not at all. Above I made the distinction between reason in a human's mind and a reason as an objective fact. To stress the difference, I may have reason to believe that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll (I don't know if there is good reason for this belief, I don't really know about the facts of the case, I'm just supposing that there might be such reasons.), but in fact there was no gunman on the grassy knoll. The reasons in my head do not necessarily correspond to causes in reality, even if my reasons are good ones in the sense that I am blameless for accepting them as reasons. My reasons are my valid and sound thought processes; objective reasons are things like causes, or properties of an object. Now observation of a cause-and-effect relationship, and the observation of the cause, should be good reason to believe the effect will follow--but we shouldn't conflate the two concepts. The point of the argument was to demonstrate that relational properties permit of infinities, and that the property of "being a cause" is relational.

You never asked me what the term means, and here I assume you mean "correspondence", though you could be referring to "infinity". I assumed, since we have been using both in conversation already and I have repeatedly stated what "infinite quantity" means, that the point was not in question. Your lack of reading comprehension, though, is telling. I didn't say f(n) = f(2n). I said that on assumption that f(n) = f(n') then n = n'. This is the definition of injectivity, which is part of the proof that a function is a one-to-one correspondence. Again. Reading comprehension. As for surjectivity, it absolutely doesn't require the assumption that f(n) = f(n'), and I didn't assume it. I stated that surjectivity is obvious. If you want me to spell that out too, I can. Note that I had injectivity and surjectivity as soon as I had n |--> 2n, but there is still the matter of proving it. The map which assigns (x, y) in Z/2 x Z/2 to x + 2y is instantly an injection and a surjection into Z/4, but unless my audience is mathematicians, I think I ought to say a little bit about why that's so. Again, you assume but do not prove your assertion that reality is finite. Until you can prove this, you cannot use it to convince me or any rational person of anything in this regard. Because of the blatantness of your circularity, if your next post does not concede the point or make some genuine attempt at proving the point at issue, I am going to assume that you are either dishonest or intellectually incapable of pursuing this conversation in a fruitful way.

There are present causes and effects, but there is no reason to suppose that any of them are the 1st or 50th, or e^(e^(e^79))-th one. This argument is a reductio ad absurdum, but the conclusion of the reductio is something which is not absurd, and which is in fact the very question at issue. Perhaps, though note that I did present an argument which claimed that the two are actually disanalogous. Yes, but not a reason in the sense that it is a justification for our holding a belief, and it is only in this sense that I believe an infinity of reasons is unacceptable as justification for any belief. This, I think, is the argument I provided above, so I believe my previous response applies.

No problem, but I thought this might happen. Why must it have had a beginning? I have to say, with no intention of insulting you, that this conversation has the same flavor as the conversation I've had about the possibility of an actual infinite quantity. My interlocutor will say that infinite x is impossible, and I will ask for a demonstration of why that is so, but not receive one. You say that infinite causes is impossible, and I ask why I should believe that. This is the crux of the matter, so all of your effort should be devoted to proving that an infinity of causes throughout history is impossible. I understand the desire to not commit yourself to certain theses, like the one I presented and then argued against above, because you wish to avoid unnecessary distraction. But at a certain point, you must have some argument about the relevant and essential points of your claim, and that is going to require you to have some philosophical commitments. At this point in the conversation, it just can't be avoided in order to make progress.

Yes, numbers come from exhaustive one-to-one correspondences. That does not imply the lack of a termination point, lack of correspondence. Take the one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers and the even numbers, given by the map n |--> 2n. Let us say that, when we evaluate the map for a given natural number, we are evaluating the function f. Suppose f(n) = f(n'), then 2n = 2n' thus n = n'. This proves injectivity, and surjectivity is obvious. Thus this is an exhaustive one-to-one correspondence, and the domain is infinite. Likewise, nothing bars the existence of a one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers and things in reality. Sure, short human life span prevents a person actually going around and telling you what the n-th number corresponds to, but that doesn't forbid a correspondence actually existing. Correspondences don't depend on human thought, unless you're one of those Primacy of Consciousness peoples. So perhaps you can supply a proof then...

My response to this is that the "in virtue of" relation permits of an infinity of relations, without contradiction. This is an interesting point, in my opinion, if only because it brings up the question, "In which contexts is infinity problematic?" In general, I don't believe that relational qualities ever forbid infinity. For instance, I am one foot away from my computer, and many feet away from China, and many more feet away from the next galaxy, and it may be the case that for any arbitrary distance, I am that far away from something (perhaps even if the something is just a point in space, if not an object in the universe). Also, one atom might have infinitely many relations to two other atoms. We could say that atom 1 has x distance to atom 2, distance y to 3, is closer to 2 than 3, has angle theta from 2 to 1 to 3, and so on. It might be possible to list infinitely many relational facts about just three atoms in space, and it is in virtue of these facts that the atoms are the way that they are. But this does nothing to raise suspicion about the fact that they are the way they are. It is not as though a thing's being is somehow in jeopardy, or somehow inconsistent or ill-defined, if it is that way in virtue of infinitely many other facts. This is a subtle philosophical point, and for that reason I am very happy we've had this conversation. We may still disagree at the end of this, but I thank you for having pressed us all to think about this matter, since it seems to have more philosophical weight than we had probably realized. This makes sense, but I want to make sure I respond to you rather than just my imagination about what you're saying. You stated it but were never able to substantiate your claim. I invite you to try now, but merely stating "quantity implies that you can count it (in finite time, I assume, since one could in principle count out the natural numbers given infinite time, even though at no particular time would they all have been enumerated)" is insufficient. You must prove that, as well.

In lieu of that, perhaps you can explain why you think that the lack of an uncaused cause would entail the lack of any cause at all. If it is not due to the argument I gave above, then I fear I'm still in need of something more.

I think I now understand the motivation of your argument, and it is a more salient point than I had first appreciated. Let me describe your claim to you, rude as that might be, and tell me if I have it right. If so, then you may want to emphasize this way of presenting your case. You claim that the present is the way that it is in virtue of the way that it was one second ago. The universe was the way that it was one second ago in virtue of the way that it was two seconds ago. If we assume that there is no point at which this reasoning terminates, then there is no foundation upon which current facts are grounded. To draw an analogy it would be like having an infinite regress of reasons for holding some belief. Since this chain of reasons would not be grounded in some indisputable or shared fact, it would not be grounded at all. Since I'm typing this on an iPhone, I'll wait until I have computer access before I post my response to this view, but perhaps you can confirm whether this is the sort of claim you're making.

I don't think it makes a difference whether we speak in terms of time or cause-and-effect. I deny that there must have been a first cause, or an uncaused cause, or anything like that. The first thing to say about this in response to your argument is that I (unlike other people on this forum) believe there is nothing inherently contradictory in the idea that there is an actual infinity of something. So right off the bat, I'm not satisfied with your argument. The second point is that, even if you accept what Ayn Rand said regarding infinity, this seems to only apply to an infinity of actually existing entities. A cause is not an actual, independent entity. Look back to my example of the ball breaking the glass. In counting the number of entities that exist at any one time in the scenario, there is only a ball and glass; not a ball, glass, a cause, and an effect. Cause and effect is a relationship between actual entities and not an entity itself. So even given the premises that Ayn Rand held, there is no reason to think that there have been finitely many causes.

What property of an event do you suppose time measures? Length measures a spatial dimension, temperature measures the heat. Surely time doesn't measure every property of an event, just some isolated one, namely its duration. Duration is not a property of any given object at any time, so an infinity of time does not imply an actual infinite quantity of any thing. Again, we revisit the point made earlier, that you seem to be reifying events and time, treating it like an object that is metaphysically indistinguishable from a rock, and this is a premise we all reject--so if you are to make your case in this way, you must first justify the premise that, by counting moments of time or measuring duration, you are counting objects rather than mere relations between objects which have no independent existence. Even understanding your claim as a claim that there must have been some point at which there was perfect stasis, your argument claims that there must have been such a point because changes must be finite--and so my rejection of this premise is the same. A change is not a physical entity, so what should be problematic about supposing that there is an infinity of them? You assume the very thing that is supposed to be proved, namely that infinity is not an actual quantity. Every argument offered so far, besides the original inductive argument, has suffered from this circularity, and it amazes me that people persist in committing this circularity after it has been pointed out. It is as if you are willing to give up on logic in order to hold on to the idea that quantities must be finite. Besides this point, you need to understand how the analogy works. The argument made was of the form, "This is not a P, this is not a P, ... therefore nothing can possibly be a P." I pointed out that this is an invalid argument, by applying the same argument form to another particular subject, and demonstrating its ridiculousness. The argument form did not depend on the failure of P to be an actual quantity, so the fact that my analogy did not make use of something that was not an actual quality is irrelevant. Thus the analogy holds. I must not. I accept that everything is something in particular, and I do not accept the premise--for which nobody has been able to offer a non-circular and sound argument for--that infinity (or, aleph_0) is not a particular quantity. That is only half of the argument. The other half of the argument is that this uncaused event entails the existence of a free will, which the original poster identifies with god.

Our consciousness perceives existing objects... What exactly do you want here? And why do you say that I only appeal to deduction? If there were some physical evidence that suggested a first moment of time, or the contrary, that would be acceptable to me. As for what role logic plays, I would hold that logic polices any beliefs we may hold on the basis of perception, and that it draws necessary conclusions on the basis of what is given. [Edit: I should note that, in our previous conversation about the possibility of an infinite universe, I rejected an inductive argument. To elaborate, I reject it firstly because it seemed to go, "This is finite, this is finite, ... Everything we ever see is finite, therefore, everything is finite." The same kind of argument could run, "This is less than a million in quantity, this is less than a million in quantity... A human being can never see a thing that has quantity one million, the abstraction is too vast, therefore, everything is less than one million." Likewise an ancient Roman could argue, "This is not a kangaroo, this is not a kangaroo,... It is impossible for there to be kangaroos." These are clearly ridiculous. But moreover, even if it were to suggest in some weak sense, that everything is finite, I would still reject this as a proof of the impossibility of infinite quantities, since for that we would need to prove the impossibility deductivly, possibly while using some very minimal, uncontroversial premises about the nature of existence (Such premises as, perhaps, "Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time." This is obviously not meant in the sense that we can merge two objects, so that their matter is inter-woven in some space, but that no two objects which have no proper parts can overlap in space.).]

I don't know what it means to validate an object. Is it like validating your parking? Deductive logic certainly does not, in itself, prove the existence of any object. Why are we talking about deductive logic, anyway? I'm just talking about any proof or sound argument to the effect that there is a first moment of time. That's what I've been stating. My point too. Are we long lost siblings?

I didn't, I said that it is conceivable that they're equivalent.

The existence of god cannot be inductively proven nor deductively proven. Existence can be observed but not deductive proven--and I'd say it's an odd turn of phrase to say that you inductively prove its existence, but whatever. I know of no proof, inductive or deductive, for the existence or lack of existence of a first moment of time, and none has been given in this thread.

No it doesn't.

I was drawing an analogy. Analogies are characterized by the source having some difference from the target, since if there were no difference, you wouldn't have an analogy to the situation but a repetition of what the situation is, and that's not helpful. My point was, it is not sufficient merely on the basis of the fact that a thing was not caused to be what it is, that you may thereby conclude that it came from nothing, and that this nothing is a thing. You cannot do it in the case of the universe, and you cannot do it in the case of a "first moment".

I'm sorry, was there something I was supposed to invoke? I pointed out that your response indicated that you were reifying nothing. My last post prefaced that the reference to walls was an analogy to your supposition that everything must come from something. I'll assume you mean "prior to the first moment of time", since I'm not sure what "prior to time itself" would mean. In any case, if you would like to characterize the first moment of time as stillness, I can think of no objection--it seems as though the concepts might be equivalent--but I still see this as no objection to the notion of a first moment in time.

In what sense would it "come" from nothing? That would be like treating "nothing" as a "something". As an analogy, the number 0 doesn't "come" from -1, and my wall doesn't "come" from the room next to mine. It just is, and does not come from anything because it's not in motion. A first moment in time would not "come from nothing" because there is nothing behind it (in the sense that, for every moment of time, that moment is not antecedent to the first one). In the same way, this universe didn't come from anywhere--it just is. That doesn't mean that there's a "nowhere" from which this universe was begot. You ask such odd questions.