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Post 60

Saturday, August 25, 2007 - 1:22pmSanction this postReply
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Bill, I wouldn't say that "nothing would exist" because that treats nothing as an existent. Your skeptic said this, whether you meant it that way or not.

Saying that "no thing prevents (makes impossible) Existence" is not problematic, (so far as I can see) because it is not implying the existence of a naught. It is simply the negation of the false statement that "some thing prevents Existence." Since Existence does exist, it is obvious that Existence was not prevented by some thing.

If Existence was not prevented by some thing, does it not follow that no thing prevented Existence?

Roger, I am not sure how a relative cold spot in the Cosmic Background Radiation counts as "nothing."

Your double negative seems wrong, and is giving me a headache. Doesn't "Existence exists because Nothing doesn't prevent it" equal "Existence exists because some thing does prevent it?"

Also, why capitalize Nothing? I assume this was insignificant on your part, but I capitalized Existence to make it clear when I was speaking of "Everything."

Click here to understand my avatar.

Ted Keer

Post 61

Sunday, August 26, 2007 - 12:21amSanction this postReply
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Bill, I wouldn't say that "nothing would exist" because that treats nothing as an existent.
No, it doesn't. Suppose I said, "I have nothing in my safe." Would you conclude from that that I was treating nothing as an existent? If you would, I'd think you were a pretty strange dude. Clearly, if I said, "I have nothing in my safe," I would simply mean that I didn't have anything in my safe. And that's exactly how the skeptic meant it in my dialogue. Remember, he is questioning why there is something in existence rather than nothing. He is not treating nothing as if it were another kind of something.

But now that we are clear on what the skeptic is saying, do you not agree that your rejoinder is insufficient to refute him, as he would reply that if nothing (i.e., not anything) exists to begin with, then nothing would exist to cause existence either. So why does it exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? It won't do to reply, "What could have prevented it?" for he would respond that simply because there isn't anything that could have prevented it doesn't explain its existence, for if there wasn't anything to prevent it, then there wouldn't have been anything to cause it either. Again, the only effective answer is simply to point out that any attempt to explain existence presupposes the very thing that one is attempting to explain.
Saying that "no thing prevents (makes impossible) Existence" is not problematic, (so far as I can see) because it is not implying the existence of a naught. It is simply the negation of the false statement that "some thing prevents Existence." Since Existence does exist, it is obvious that Existence was not prevented by some thing. If Existence was not prevented by some thing, does it not follow that no thing prevented Existence?
Yes, but however true it is, your statement doesn't satisfy its intended purpose, because it doesn't answer the skeptic; it doesn't explain why there is something rather than nothing, which is what he is asking.

- Bill

Post 62

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 5:21amSanction this postReply
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Bill: Your premise that everything must have a cause is incorrect. Every cause must exist, but not every existent must have a cause. Causality presupposes existence -- the existence of something to act as a cause; existence does not presuppose causality.
APPLAUSE!!!!
Yes, cause and effect is a function of existence, not the reverse.
Cause and effect is a process and processes are governed by principles - which are more fundamental.
Existence is the most fundamental of all natural phenomenon.
Would it not be more likely to be explained by a principle rather than a process?


Post 63

Friday, September 28, 2007 - 11:28pmSanction this postReply
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Cause and effect is a process and processes are governed by principles - which are more fundamental.
I wouldn't put it that way; a principle is an abstract generalization; I would say that cause and effect are governed by the nature of the acting entities.
Existence is the most fundamental of all natural phenomenon.
Would it not be more likely to be explained by a principle rather than a process?
Existence is not explained by anything. On what basis could you possibly explain it, if not by reference to something that already exists? That was my point when I said that causality presupposes existence, not the other way around.

- Bill

Post 64

Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 7:03amSanction this postReply
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You have taken the term 'explain' to mean to show cause and effect relationship. None exists.
To explain is to reconcile the phenomenon of existence with the principles of logic.
To explain existence is to create understanding of the nature of existence - not the cause.


For every left there exists a right. For every to there is a fro. For every up there is a down.

For every measure of distance point 'A' is separated from point 'B', point 'B' is an equal and opposite distance from point 'A'.

For every conceivable vector or numeric value there exists an opposite equivalent.

Every action precipitates a reciprocal event - an equal and opposite reaction.

Mathematics - the language of science - encodes logic into a device called an equation which requires its elements to be equivalent on opposite sides of the argument.

From simple addition to quantum mechanics, reciprocal balance is a prevailing dynamic which even the rules of cause and effect must obey.

If within each elemental particle qualitative values were similarly balanced it would not necessarily be detectible to the senses.

If such is the case then the value of Ø may be the common essence of every element in the cosmic spectrum - the fulcrum of an eternally balanced perpetual system.

(Edited by Jack (THoR) McNally on 9/29, 9:29am)


Post 65

Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 10:06amSanction this postReply
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You have taken the term 'explain' to mean to show cause and effect relationship. None exists. To explain is to reconcile the phenomenon of existence with the principles of logic. To explain existence is to create understanding of the nature of existence - not the cause.
Okay.

- Bill

Post 66

Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 4:21pmSanction this postReply
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~ I think the whole prob with this thread is the use of 'because' as an...umm...explanation, which sounds like a 'causal' (ontological) explanation rather than a reason (epistemological) for accepting that 'existence exists.'
~ Further, once the term 'nothing' got brought up, boy does Plato's Beard grow in these arguments. Reminds me of the ending of the 2-column (and cute) essay in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy on "Nothing":  "Unless the solution be [re how to use the term 'meaningfully']...that it is not nothing that has been worrying them [existentialist philosophers], but they who have been worrying it."
~ Re 'Existence', can we just say "It is, and, th-th-th-that's all, folks!" and let it go at that?

LLAP
J:D


Post 67

Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 4:24pmSanction this postReply
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Ted:

     Thanx for the YouTube visuals on tessies. Helps us here in 'flatland' (er, 'sphereland') see the ideas bit better. --- What category did you find them in?

LLAP
J:D


Post 68

Monday, October 1, 2007 - 8:56pmSanction this postReply
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I happen to think that science actually does have some things to say on certain issues, as with the inane soul question.

As for the tesseracts, I simply used the key word tesseract.

Ted

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Post 69

Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - 4:12amSanction this postReply
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~~~~~~~~Following on #9 and #16~~~~~~~~

 

Philosophy and Scientific Cosmology 1, 2, 3

 

Scientific Cosmology

Update (Big Bounce and Loop Quantum Gravity)

Update (Galaxy Clusters Slide to the South)

 

Conserved: 1, 2
(A Trait of the Whole)

 


Post 70

Wednesday, November 5, 2008 - 9:51pmSanction this postReply
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If:
Existence is identity, and

If:
Existence does not require causality (although causality requires existence), and

If:
Causality is identity in action,

Then:
Existence (in its most irreducible primary form) is identity without action.

So:
The spatial dimension is the most irreducible primary of existence? After all, space is the only identity I can think of, that has no "action". And moreover, action is not possible without any space in which to take place -- right?

Bill? Stephen?

(Edited by Warren Chase Anspaugh on 11/05, 9:52pm)


Post 71

Thursday, November 6, 2008 - 10:13amSanction this postReply
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Warren,

Space has action. It's filled with virtual particles (which are real despite the name) or vacuum energy. The Casimir Effect provides empirical evidence of these phenomenona. Also, if you adopt a vector field theory, then the idea of inactive space becomes even more untenable.

Jordan


Post 72

Thursday, November 6, 2008 - 12:02pmSanction this postReply
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Warren,

 

Lambert wrote: “Duration appears to be inseparable from existence.” I think his drift was right: it appears that way because it is that way.

 

All particular existents have spatial and temporal characters. All particular existents stand in some causal relations. That is not to say that the existent that is the totality of all more particular existents could have an external cause of its existence.


Post 73

Thursday, November 6, 2008 - 4:36pmSanction this postReply
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Stephen,
All particular existents have spatial and temporal characters. All particular existents stand in some causal relations.
For what it's worth, I'm not sure this can be said of photons. Since time slows down as something approximates light speed, and since photons are at light speed, photons do not "experience" time. Yet they are particular existents.
 
Jordan
 


Post 74

Thursday, November 6, 2008 - 5:57pmSanction this postReply
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Photons have world lines in spacetime, on the null cones. That is enough for having a spatial and temporal character, though it would not be entirely the same character Newton or Lambert would have been supposing. 

 

The clocks carried along with an elementary particle possessing rest mass will slow down in comparison with separated clocks along a stationary frame through which that particle flies. The greater the speed of the particle (a particle with rest mass) relative to the stationary frame, the more the clocks carried with it slow down. But so long as it remains a particle of a sort possessing a rest mass, however closely its relative velocity approaches the speed of light, its clocks will be ticking away durations. The only way to reach the vacuum speed of light is for the particle with rest mass to be converted into particles with no rest mass, into particles such as photons. They will fly at finite speed to distance points over finite durations. A photon emitted from annihilation of an electron with a positron will be sensibly said to be absorbed by other particles possessing rest mass at a later time. The photon exists through definite time intervals.

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 11/07, 4:28am)


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Post 75

Friday, November 7, 2008 - 12:34amSanction this postReply
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Warren, you wrote,
If:
Existence is identity, and

If:
Existence does not require causality (although causality requires existence), and

If:
Causality is identity in action,

Then:
Existence (in its most irreducible primary form) is identity without action.
Your conclusion doesn't follow, because you're using "causality" in two different senses: one in the sense of a causal antecedent; and the other in the sense of a thing's characteristic behavior. So, your reasoning is invalid, because it rest on the fallacy of equivocation.

Existence does not imply causality in the first sense -- in the sense of a causal antecedent, because it's obvious that nothing could cause existence, since the cause itself would have to exist in order to act as a cause. However, existence does imply causality in the second sense, because how something characteristically behaves is a function of its identity.

- Bill

Post 76

Friday, November 7, 2008 - 12:33pmSanction this postReply
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It is very, very simple. Existence exists because nothing prevented it.

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Post 77

Saturday, November 8, 2008 - 10:32pmSanction this postReply
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Oh, for Pete's sakes, Ted! Existence doesn't exist "because nothing prevented it!" It doesn't exist for any reason. Its existence is the basis of reasons.

The proposition, “Nothing prevented existence" could mean either that “nothing prevented it from coming into existence” or that “nothing prevented it from continuing to exist.” If the former, then the claim is false, for existence didn't come into existence; it didn't at some point in time emerge out of nothing. There was never a time when it didn't exist. If the latter, then the claim is false as well, because in order for something to prevent existence from continuing to exist, that something would itself have to remain in existence.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer on 11/08, 11:11pm)


Post 78

Sunday, November 9, 2008 - 8:15amSanction this postReply
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Nevertheless, nothing prevented existence. You cannot deny this.

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Post 79

Sunday, November 9, 2008 - 9:59pmSanction this postReply
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Nevertheless, nothing prevented existence. You cannot deny this.
But that's not a reason that existence exists. You said it was. You said, "Existence exists because nothing prevented it."

- Bill

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