Necessary Thing

[Whateverist]

It may well be a verb but existence is certainly not an act which a thing does.  No doing required.  Existence is being, not doing.  We don't do the be, we be the be.  So a verb, yes.  But an act?  No.

Is "to be" not an action? By act, I do not mean a conscious or willed or whatever sort of action. By the "act" of existence, I mean the most fundamental act any thing actually does: being. When we say, "that thing exists", it is identical with saying, "that thing is being that thing". I don't think we actually disagree here, so hopefully we can come to a common understanding.

When you say, "we be the be", the verb is "be". What is that verb describing if not an action?

It serves as much as an adjective as a verb. To say it is is to say it is existing. Notice that it is all word play at any rate. We're no closer to knowing something essential about the universe by examining the way we use our language.

Well how are you going to do that? How do you separate out correlation from causation on such a basic and general level?

Well, how about an example. 

Either helium exists on the condition that some other thing exists, or it does not. 

Are there any conditions for the existence of helium? Yes. Helium exists on the condition that at least two protons exist. There are more conditions than that, but that is at least one of the conditions. If only a single proton exists, then the existence of helium is impossible. If a single atom of helium is existing, and suddenly one of the protons ceases to exist, then that helium atom also ceases to exist. Helium exists conditionally.

Therefore, at least one thing exists on the condition that (an)other thing(s) is/are also existing.

But I'm not arguing that nothing is contingent, only that everything is contingent. The contingency isn't inherently hierarchal. Rather it is a function of the words and concepts we deploy to describe things. What we call Helium depends on a molecule's having two protons because of the definitions we employ. Hydrogen is no less contingent than Helium by virtue of having one few protons. We live in a state of mutual contingency.

On the face of it, it would seem that everything is contingent at some level. Do you have an exemplar of something whose existence is not contingent at all on anything in any conceivable manner? What makes you think such a thing exists? I question whether the category you've constructed may in fact be entirely empty.

I don't have an exemplar of a non-contingent thing. If it does exist, that thing(s) exists like nothing else in the universe/multiverse/whateververse exists, i.e. unconditionally.

If helium exists on the condition that at least two protons exist, the next question should regard the conditions for protons to exist. Whatever conditions those may be (if any), must also belong to the conditions for existence of helium. Here's why: if one of the conditions for a proton's existence fails, then so does the existence of the proton. If that proton is one of the conditions for a given helium atom, then the helium atom ceases to exist synchronously/concurrently with the failure of the proton's conditional failure as well as the proton's cessation of existence. 

If the proton has no conditions for its existence, then we have quickly discovered a necessary thing, a non-contingent thing, a thing which exists without the condition that another things also exists. Either way, we are stuck with a logical analysis. 

Is it logically possible for a thing to have an infinity of conditions for its immediate existence (that is different from an infinitely long chain of historical conditions leading to the existence of a thing, which I do think is logically possible)? I don't see how it is logically possible to have such an infinity of conditions for a such a thing to actually exist, but that doesn't mean I'm right...hence the thread.

Suppose we found something for which we could find no dependency upon anything else. Would that for sure be a non-contingent thing or would it just as likely be something we don't fully understand? Is there any reason to think that we as human beings have the capacity to understand everything? I doubt that our ability to describe it verbally or understand it is the final arbiter of the way things stand in the world. We are part of the world, not its judge.