One can describe the medium “into” which space expanded as an external ontological condition, so to speak, that made this process possible in the first place. In your answer you are basically saying that this medium has no ontological status whatsoever. If that is the case, then you are basically claiming that there is not even any meaning to trying to attribute “existence” to it.
Correct?

Or, phrased differently:
Your claim is that claims about such a “medium” are not factual claims that carry a truth value.
Have I described your position correctly?

I do not understand all these words. What I wrote is simply that there is no such thing. What is unclear here?

What is the logical status of your claim:

“There is no such thing”

Is it a factual claim?
Is it an a priori claim? An empirical one?

It is, of course, a factual claim. If you are asking how I know it, simply from Big Bang theory. That is what it says.

Your answer implies that this is an a priori factual claim. It is not as though we observed what was “beyond” the universe and discovered there that same “reality” which you described as “there is no such thing.”
So the question arises: how can this a priori factual claim go beyond the boundaries of the universe and describe the reality supposedly found beyond it?

You might say that this factual claim does not speak at all about what lies “outside” the universe, but then you would have to retreat from your claim that “there is no such thing.” For a *positive* factual claim about the universe is not the same as your *negative* factual claim about what lies beyond its boundaries.

So my question is:
Is your factual claim negative (like, for example, the claim “there is nothing in the cup”) or positive (like the claim “there is water in the cup”)?

I think this hair-splitting is pointless. The law of gravity is not empirical in your sense either. It is a theory formed by generalizing from facts. The Big Bang is also such a theory, and the question dealt with it. We have no indication whatsoever of the existence of something outside space, and the expansion or contraction of our space adds nothing in that direction. Therefore there is no point discussing the undefined question about the status of that thing for whose existence there is no indication at all.
By the way, the claim that there are no demons or fairies is also not empirical. It is probably a hyperbolic anti-social post-structuralist negative ontological condition. 🙂

1. My question was not about the Big Bang. It was about the logical status (and perhaps the ontological one) of the “medium” into which the universe expanded.
2. Your answer seems methodologically problematic to me, because it tries to subordinate a priori philosophical thinking (in fact metaphysical thinking) to a scientific theory.
Let me explain:
We know, of course, that every scientific theory necessarily relies on a priori “meta-scientific” concepts (such as causality). But there is no problem there, because there the philosophical layer comes first and makes scientific thought possible. In contrast, in your answer to me you proposed reversing the order—you derive from science a priori factual (metaphysical) claims about what exists—or “does not exist”—outside the universe and outside the laws of physics.

I am not deriving anything. The opening question in the thread dealt with the Big Bang, and I answered that in Big Bang theory there is no medium in which the universe is situated. Whether there is or is not such a medium is a different question, and physics does not know what to say about it. When there is no other indication of it whatsoever, I see no reason to say that there is.

Regarding what our rabbi wrote, “I am not deriving,” that requires further analysis, for we hold that “the righteous person decrees”?!

The righteous person decrees, and the Holy One, blessed be He, performs integration.

Again: the question *was not about* the Big Bang (even though it was mentioned), but about the *medium* into which the universe expanded *after* the Big Bang. True, one can generalize from certain facts about nature to the physical universe as a whole. But you insisted that you are generalizing about what lies *beyond* the boundaries of that universe. Something does not add up for me.