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Explaining Existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Chris Mortensen
Chris Mortensen*
Affiliation:
The University of Adelaide, Box 498, G.P.O., Adelaide5001, South Australia
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Extract

The problem of why something exists rather than nothing is doubtless as old as human philosophising. Of comparable antiquity is the observation that one cannot hope to explain why something exists rather than nothing by appealing to the existence of something else, on pain of vicious circularity.

In this paper, I distinguish between the question of why anything exists, and the question of why particulars exist. These two questions are equivalent only if the only things that exist are particulars. Certainly many have held that universals as well as particulars exist. I take it here that there is a prima facie distinction between universals and particulars. It follows that the former question is prima facie more general than the latter. I will initially concentrate on the latter, taking a hint from some recent theorising about the physics of the Big Bang.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 713 - 722
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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References

1 See e.g. Armstrong, D.M. Universals and Scientific Realism (2 vols.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978).Google Scholar

2 Edward Tryon, ‘is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?’ (hereafter UVF) Nature 246 (1973) 396-7; also ‘What Made the World?’ (hereafter WMW) New Scientist 1400 (1984) 14-16.

3 Tryon:’ … some pre-existing true vacuum,’ WMW, 15; or’ … the vacuum of some larger space in which ours is embedded,’ UVF, 397. It is fair to say that much of the physicist's interest in such a theory is in the accounts of how a big universe could come out of a little quantum fluctuation and of how conservation principles can be held true, which do not concern us here.

4 See e.g. Nerlich, Graham The Shape of Space (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975).Google Scholar

5 In addition to the use of ‘ex nihilo,’ we have, for example,’ … some pre-existing true vacuum, or state of nothingness,’ WMW 15, emphasis mine.

6 See Nerlich, Ch. 2; also his ‘Hands, Knees and Absolute Space,’ The Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973), 337-51; also Mortensen, Chris and Nerlich, Graham ‘Spacetime and Handedness,’ Ratio 25 (1983) 1–13;Google Scholar and ‘Physical Topology,’ The Journal of Philosophical Logic 5 (1978) 209-23. Note, too, that it is not apparent how to make Tryon's own words consistent here: how in a state of genuine nothingness could anything pre-exist?

7 A. Grūnbaum, The Philosophical Retention of Absolute Space in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity,’ in Smart, J.J.C. ed., Problems of Space and Time (New York: Macmillan 1964) 313–17.Google Scholar

8 A mathematically more sophisticated theory would deal with the events Ei and their probabilities using integrals over finite intervals of time, and would also need to give conditions on higher derivatives of M, which would in turn be a tensor quantity; but we will not bother about these complications here.

9 Independently, we can consider whether the whole of time stretches infinitely, or only finitely, into the past. One way, but not the only way, in which the latter could happen, is if M-0 at a first instant. Time would then be structured isomorphically with a finite closed interval of the real numbers, O≤ t ≤ now (ignoring future times).

10 Tryon, UVF, 397

11 Nozick, Robert Philosophical Explanations (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1981)Google Scholar

12 Burke, Michael ‘Hume and Edwards on Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984) 355–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Armstrong, ; see also his What Is a Law of Nature? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984);Google Scholar Tooley, Michael ‘The Nature of Laws,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1977) 667–98;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dretske, Fred ‘Laws of Nature,’ Philosophy of Science 44 (1977) 248–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Thanks to Michael Bradley and Graham Nerlich for helpful comments.