In this video from the interview series Closer to Truth, the US presenter Robert Lawrence Kuhn and the UK philosopher A C Grayling peel back the layers of a question that’s been bandied about in many a Philosophy 101 classroom – ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ With Kuhn defending the question as a legitimate line of enquiry, and Grayling arguing that the question is ‘strictly meaningless, and for that reason unanswerable’, their discussion launches into a compelling exploration of logic and language, and the ways they intertwine.
Is the question ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ even worth asking?
Video by Closer to Truth
13 October 2022

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