| | Ted, some combinations of words are like optical illusions - they fool us into thinking we are grasping a fact of reality. When I said that it made no sense to predicate "prevention" of "existence" - it was me saying that there must be a thing to do the preventing, which, as Bill pointed out is asking for something outside of existence. I know that you grasped that.
In your last post you used the word "universe" - this isn't an area where I have any expertise, but I've always used that word mean all that exists now. Where as "existence" includes all that has existed. I'll go on using "existence."
Now, strictly speaking your formulation of "nothing" prevented existence is accurate in a sense, but only on forbearance of a kind of stolen concept fallacy. If you can not predicate 'prevention,' of existence then it makes no sense to say you can as long as the preventer is a thing that doesn't exist. "Prevent" is a concept that cannot be applied to existence as a whole. You have to 'steal' the meaning of 'prevent' which includes that which does the preventing and that which is prevented. If someone prevents me from entering a room, I have a 'something' (that is capable of preventing) and some mechanism of preventing that is valid (perhaps a person stood in my way) and something that could be prevented (my entering the room). With your formulation, there is no possible preventer, no possible mechanism of prevention makes sense, and that which would have been prevented is everything (again, leaving nothing to do the preventing).
When someone says, "Nothing prevented Steve from entering the room," it makes sense because real life has lots of examples of things that could, mechanisms of prevention that would do that, and not entering the room is clearly a possibility.
The following three sentences are all grammatically correct and seem to make sense, but one would never use any of them but the first to avoid abusing the concept of "prevent.
-----------------
The concept of prevention does not apply to existence.
There is no thing that could prevent existence.
Nothing prevents existence.
|
|
